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THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 



THE 
TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

Speeches, Messages, and Addresses 
made b}^ the President between 
February 24, 1919, and July 8, 
1919, Covering the Active Period 
of the Peace Conference at Paris 

BY 

WOODROW WILSON 

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

11. S' 'Prft^lclen-i', J1)3-/^j^^ CW#Isotj) 




Harper &. Brothers Publishers 

New York and London 






Books by 
WOODROW WILSON 

THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 

GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 

WHY WE ARE AT WAR 

A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

WHEN A MAN COMES TO HIMSELF 

ON BEING HUMAN 

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 



HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK 
[Established 1817] 



Gift 
Publisher 



liEo 20 1919 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

Foreword vii 

I. The Force of an Idea i 

II. Government the Servant of the People 17 

III. Defending the League Constitution . 22 

IV. The Amended Covenant 41 

V. A Statement 43 

VI. The Principles of Peace 45 

VII. The New League Covenant 52 

VIII. A Memorandum to Orlando 59 

IX. A Proclamation 66 

X. America Is Ready 70 

XI. Domestic Legislation 79 

XII. The Presidential Task 97 

XIII. A Memorial Day Message 104 

XIV. The ^Memorial Day Address 106 

XV. A League of Right 116 

XVI. Nations in Partnership 127 

XVII. The Treaty a New Magna Charta . . 132 

XVIII. Farewell to France 135 

XIX. A Parting Word to Great Britain . . 137 

XX. The Laws of Freedom 139 

XXI. A Just Peace 149 

XXII. A Home Greeting 155 



FOREWORD 

The Triumph of Ideals forms the fifth con- 
secutive volume of President Wilson's public 
utterances, the preceding titles being, Why 
We Are at War^ In Our First Year of War, 
Guarantees of Peace, and International Ideals. 

The present collection contains the speeches, 
messages, and addresses delivered by the Presi- 
dent between February 24, 19 19, and July 8, 
1 91 9, covering the working session of the Peace 
Conference at Paris. Among the most im- 
portant titles may be noted: **The Force of 
an Idea'* (the speech at Mechanics Hall, 
Boston); ** Defending the League Constitu- 
tion" (the address at the Metropolitan Opera 
House, New York) ; "The Principles of Peace" 
(the pubHc statement upon the Adriatic ques- 
tion); "The New League Covenant" (an ad- 
dress before the plenary session of the Peace 
Conference); "A Memorandum to Orlando"; 
"America Is Ready" (an address before the 
Academy of Moral and Political Science, 
Paris); "Domestic Legislation" (the Message 
to the Congress); "The Presidential Task" 
(an address at the dinner in honor of Doctor 



FOREWORD 

Pessoa, President-elect of Brazil); ''The Me- 
morial Day Address"; *'A League of Right" 
(an address delivered at the Palace in Brus- 
sels); ''The Laws of Freedom" (an address 
delivered aboard the George Washington) ; and 
**A Just Peace" (the Carnegie Hall speech). 

The bulk of the subject-matter deals with 
the ethical abstractions which Mr. Wilson so 
well knows how to discuss with illuminating 
clarity and force. Yet these papers show no 
lack of definite constructive statesmanship, 
and his summing up of the vexed Adriatic 
question, together with the famous memo- 
randum to Orlando, show the President at 
his best in their keen deductive logic and 
unanswerable conclusions. Mr. Wilson has 
probably written more state papers and de- 
livered more important speeches than any 
two or three of his predecessors in his great 
office. Partizan critics and partizan admirers 
may agree on one thing certainly: When Mr. 
Wilson speaks the whole world stops to listen. 

Editorial revision by the President being 
impossible, the publishers assume responsi- 
bility for the chapter and sub-titles and for 
the general arrangement of the subject-matter. 
By the President's direction all royalties are 
paid over to the American Red Cross. 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 



THE FORCE OF AN IDEA 
(Boston, February 24^ iQiQ-) 

Speaking in Mechanics Hall before an im- 
mense audience the President said: 

Governor Coolidge, Mr. Mayor, Fel- 
low-citizens: I wonder if you are half as 
glad to see me as I am to see you. It warms 
my heart to see a great body of my fellow- 
citizens again, because in some respects during 
the recent months I have been very lonely 
indeed without your comradeship and counsel, 
and I tried at every step of the work which 
fell to me to recall what I was sure would be 
yoin- counsel with regard to the great matters 
which were under consideration. 

I do not want you to think that I have not 
been appreciative of the extraordinarily gen- 
erous reception which was given to me on the 
other side. In saying that it makes me very 



2 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

happy to get home again I do not mean to 
say that I was not very deeply touched by the 
cries that came from the great crowds on the 
other side. But I want to say to you in all 
honesty that I felt them to be a call of greeting 
to you rather than to me. 

I did not feel that the greeting was personal. 
I had in my heart the overcrowning pride of 
being your representative and of receiving the 
plaudits of men everywhere who felt that your 
hearts beat with theirs in the cause of liberty. 
There was no mistaking the tone in the voices 
of those great crowds. It was not a tone of 
mere greeting; it was not a tone of mere gen- 
erous welcome; it was the calling of comrade 
to comrade, the cries that come from men who 
say, '*We have waited for this day when the 
friends of liberty should come across the sea 
and shake hands with us, to see that a new 
world was constructed upon a new basis and 
foundation of justice and right." 

TRUSTED THROUGHOUT WORLD 

I can't tell you the inspiration that came 
from the sentiments that come out of those 
simple voices of the crowd, and the proudest 
thing I have to report to you is that this 
great country of ours is trusted throughout the 
world. 

I have not come to report the proceedings 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 3 

or the results of the proceedings of the Peace 
Conference; that would be premature. I 
can say that I have received very happy 
impressions from this conference; the impres- 
sion that while there are many differences of 
judgment, while there are some divergences of 
object, there is nevertheless a common spirit 
and a common realization of the necessity 
of setting up new standards of right in the 
world. 

Because the men who are in conference in 
Paris realize as keenly as any American can 
realize that they are not the masters of their 
people; that they are the servants of their 
people and that the spirit of their people has 
awakened to a new purpose and a new concep- 
tion of their power to realize that purpose, and 
that no man dare go home from that conference 
and report anything less noble than was 
expected of it. 

The conference seems to you to go slowly; 
from day to day in Paris it seems to go slowly; 
but I wonder if you realize the complexity of 
the task which it has undertaken. It seems 
as if the settlements of this war affect, and 
affect directly, every great, and I sometimes 
think every small, nation in the world, and 
no one decision can prudently be made which 
is not properly linked in with the great series 
of other decisions which must accompany it, 
and it must be reckoned in with the final result 



4 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

if the real quality and character of that result 
is to be properly judged. 

HEARING THE WHOLE CASE 

What we are doing is to hear the whole 
case; hear it from the mouths of the men most 
interested ; hear it from those who are officially 
commissioned to state it; hear the rival 
claims; hear the claims that affect new na- 
tionalities, that affect new areas of the world, 
that affect new commercial and economic 
connections that have been established by the 
great World War through which we have gone. 
And I have been struck by the moderateness 
of those who have represented national claims. 

I can testify that I have nowhere seen the 
gleam of passion. I have seen earnestness, 
I have seen tears come to the eyes of men who 
pleaded for downtrodden people whom they 
were privileged to speak for; but they were 
not the tears of anguish, they were the tears of 
ardent hope. 

And I don't see how any man can fail to 
have been subdued by these pleas, subdued 
to this feeling, that he was not there to assert 
an individual judgment of his own, but to 
try to assist the cause of humanity. 

And in the midst of it all, every interest 
seeks out first of all, when it reaches Paris, 
the representatives of the United States. Why? 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 5 

Because — and I think I am stating the most 
wonderful fact in history — because there is no 
nation in Europe that suspects the motives 
of the United States. 

Was there ever so wonderful a thing seen 
before? Was there ever so moving a thing? 
Was there ever any fact that so bound the 
nation that had won that esteem forever to 
deserve it ? 

I would not have you understand that the 
great men who represent the other nations 
there in conference are disesteemed by those 
who know them. Quite the contrary. But 
you understand that the nations of Europe 
have again and again clashed with one another 
in competitive interest. It is impossible for 
men to forget those sharp issues that were 
drawn between them in times past. 

It is impossible for men to believe that all 
ambitions have all of a sudden been foregone. 
They remember territory that was coveted; 
they remember rights that it was attempted to 
extort; they remember political ambitions 
which it was attempted to realize, and, while 
they believe that men have come into a dif- 
ferent temper, they cannot forget these things, 
and so they do not resort to one another for 
a dispassionate view of the matters in con- 
troversy. They resort to that nation which 
has won the enviable distinction of being re- 
garded as the friend of mankind. 

2 



6 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

Whenever it is desired to send a small force 
of soldiers to occupy a piece of territory where 
it is thought nobody else will be welcome, they 
ask for American soldiers, and where other 
soldiers would be looked upon with suspicion 
and perhaps met with resistance, the American 
soldier is welcomed with acclaim. 

I have had so many grounds for pride on 
the other side of the water that I am very 
thankful that they are not grounds for per- 
sonal pride, but for national pride. If they 
were grounds for personal pride I'd be the 
most stuck-up man in the world, and it has 
been an infinite pleasure to me to see those 
gallant soldiers of ours, of whom the Con- 
stitution of the United States made me the 
proud commander. 

You may be proud of the Twenty-sixth 
Division, but I commanded the Twenty-sixth 
Division, and see what they did under my 
direction. And everybody praises the Amer- 
ican soldier with the feeling that in praising 
him he is subtracting from the credit of no 
one else. 

Europe's belief in America 

I have been searching for the fundamental 
fact that converted Europe to believe in us. 
Before this war Europe did not believe in us 
as she does now. She did not believe in us 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 7 

throughout the first three years of the war. 
She seems really to have believed that we 
were holding off because we thought we could 
make more by staying out than by going in. 
And all of a sudden, in a short eighteen months, 
the whole verdict is reversed. 

There can be but one explanation for it. 
They saw what we did — that without making 
a single claim we put all our men and all our 
means at the disposal of those who were fight- 
ing for their homes, in the first instance, but 
for a cause, the cause of human rights and 
justice; and that we went in not to support 
their national claims, but to support the great 
cause which they held in common. 

And when they saw that America not only 
held ideals, but acted ideals, they were con- 
verted to America and became firm partizans 
of those ideals. 

I met a group of scholars when I was in 
Paris — some gentlemen from one of the Greek 
universities who had come to see me, and in 
whose presence, or rather in the presence of 
whose traditions of learning, I felt very young 
indeed. I told them that I had one of the 
delightful revenges that sometimes come to a 
man. All my life I had heard men speak with 
a sort of condescension of ideals and of ideal- 
ists, and particularly those separated, en- 
cloistered persons whom they choose to term 
academic, who were in the habit of uttering 



8 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

ideals in the free atmosphere when they clash 
with nobody in particular. 



A SWEET REVENGE 

And I said I have had this sweet revenge. 
Speaking with perfect frankness in the name 
of the people of the United States, I have ut- 
tered as the objects of this great war ideals, 
and nothing but ideals, and the war has been 
won by that inspiration. Men were fighting 
with tense muscles and lowered head until they 
came to realize those things, feeling they were 
fighting for their lives and their country, and 
when these accents of what it was all about 
reached them from America they lifted their 
heads, they raised their eyes to heaven, when 
they saw men in khaki coming across the sea 
in the spirit of crusaders, and they found that 
these were strange men, reckless of danger not 
only, but reckless because they seemed to see 
something that made that danger worth while. 

Men have testified to me in Europe that 
our men were possessed by something that 
they could only call a religioas fervor. They 
were not like any of the other soldiers. They 
had a vision, they had a dream, and they 
were fighting in the dream, and fighting in the 
dream they turned the whole tide of battle 
and it never came back. 

One of our American humorists, meeting 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 9 

the criticism that American soldiers were not 
trained long enough, said, ''It takes only half 
as long to train an American soldier as any 
other, because you only have to train him one 
way, and he did only go one way, and he never 
came back until he could do it when he 
pleased." 

CONFIDENCE IMPOSES BURDEN 

And now do you realize that this confidence 
we have established throughout the world im- 
poses a burden upon us — ^if you choose to 
call it a burden. It is one of those burdens 
which any nation ought to be proud to carry. 
Any man who resists the present tides that 
run in the world will find himself thrown upon 
a shore so high and barren that it will seem as 
if he had been separated from his human 
kind forever. 

The Europe that I left the other day was 
full of something that it had never felt fill 
its heart so full before. It was full of hope. 
The Europe of the second year of the war, the 
Europe of the third year of the war, was sink- 
ing to a sort of stubborn desperation. They 
did not see any great thing to be achieved 
even when the war should be won. They 
hoped there would be some salvage; they 
hoped that they could clear their territories of 
invading armies; they hoped they could set 



lo THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

up their homes and start their industries afresh, 
but they thought it would simply be the re- 
sumption of the old life that Europe had led 
— led in fear, led in anxiety, led in constant 
suspicious watchfulness. They never dreamed 
that it would be a Europe of settled peace and 
of justified hope. 

BUOYED UP WITH HOPE 

And now these ideals have wrought this new 
magic, that all the peoples of Europe are 
buoyed up and confident in the spirit of hope, 
because they believe that we are at the eve 
of a new age in the world when nations will 
understand one another, when nations will 
support one another in every just cause, when 
nations will unite every moral and every 
political strength to see that the right shall 
prevail. 

If America were at this juncture to fail the 
world, what would come of it? I do not mean 
any disrespect to any other great people when 
I say that America is the hope of the world; 
and if she does not justify that hope the re- 
sults are unthinkable. Men will be thrown 
back upon the bitterness of disappointment not 
only, but the bitterness of despair. 

All nations will be set up as hostile camps 
again; the men at the Peace Conference will 
go home with their heads upon their breasts, 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS ii 

knowing that they have failed — for they were 
bidden not to come home from there until they 
did something more than sign a treaty of peace. 
Suppose we sign the treaty of peace and that 
it is the most satisfactory treaty of peace that 
the confusing elements of the modem world 
will afford and go home and think about our 
labors, we will know that we have left written 
upon the historic table at Versailles, upon 
which Vergennes and Benjamin Franklin wrote 
their names, nothing but a modern scrap of 
paper; no nations united to defend it, no great 
forces combined to make it good, no assurance 
given to the downtrodden and fearful people 
of the world that they shall be safe. Any 
man who thinks that America will take part 
in giving the world any such rebuff and dis- 
appointment as that does not know America. 

INVITATION TO A TEST 

I invite them to test the sentiments of the 
nation. We set this up to make men free and 
we did not confine our conception and pur- 
pose to America, and now we will make men 
free. If we did not do that the fame of Amer- 
ica would be gone and all her powers be dis- 
sipated. She then would have to keep her 
power for those narrow, selfish, provincial pur- 
poses which seem so dear to some minds that 
have no sweep beyond the nearest horizon. 



iz THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

I should welcome no sweeter challenge than 
that. I have fighting blood in me, and it is 
sometimes a delight to let it have scope, 
but if it is a challenge on this occasion it will 
be an indulgence. Think of the picture, think 
of the utter blackness that would fall on the 
world. America has failed! America made a 
little essay at generosity and then withdrew. 
America said, *'We are your friends," but 
it was only for to-day, not for to-morrow. 
America said, ''Here is our power to vindicate 
right," and then the next day said, ''Let right 
take care of itself and we will take care of our- 
selves." America said, "We set up a fight to 
lead men along the paths of liberty, but we 
have lowered it; it is intended only to light 
our own path." We set up a great ideal of 
liberty and then we said: "Liberty is a thing 
that you must win for yourself. Do not call 
upon us." And think of the world that we 
would leave. Do you realize how many new 
nations are going to be set up in the presence 
of old and powerful nations in Europe and 
left there, if left by us, without a disinterested 
friend ? 

POLAND AND ARMENIA 

Do you believe in the Polish cause, as I do ? 
Are you going to set up Poland, immature, 
inexperienced, as yet unorganized, and leave 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 13 

her with a circle of armies around her ? Do you 
believe in the aspiration of the Czecho-Slovaks 
and the Jugo-Slavs as I do? Do you know 
how many powers would be quick to pounce 
upon them if there were not the guarantees 
of the world behind their liberty? 

Have you thought of the sufferings of Ar- 
menia? You poured out your money to help 
succor the Armenians after they suffered; now 
set your strength so that they shall never suffer 
again. 

The arrangements of the present peace can- 
not stand a generation unless they are guar- 
anteed by the united forces of the civilized 
world. And if we do not guarantee them 
cannot you see the picture? Your hearts have 
instructed you where the burden of this war 
fell. It did not fall upon the national treas 
uries, it did not fall upon the instruments of 
administration, it did not fall upon the re- 
sources of the nation. It fell upon the 
victims' homes everywhere, where women 
were toiling in hope that their men would 
come back 

When I think of the homes upon which dull 
despair would settle were this great hope dis- 
appointed, I should wish, for my part, never to 
have had America play any part whatever 
in this attempt to emancipate the world. But 
I talk as if there were any question. I have 
no more doubt of the verdict of America in 



14 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

this matter than I have doubt of the blood 
that is in me. 



NO STOPPING SHORT OF GOAL 

And so, my fellow-citizens, I have come back 
to report progress, and I do not believe that 
the progress is going to stop short of the goal. 
The nations of the world have set their heads 
now to do a great thing, and they are not going 
to slacken their purpose. And when I speak 
of the nations of the world I do not speak of 
the governments of the world. I speak of the 
peoples who constitute the nations of the 
world. They are in the saddle, and they 
are going to see to it that if their present 
governments do not do their will some other 
governments shall, and the secret is out and 
the present governments know it. 

There is a great deal of harmony to be got 
out of common knowledge. There is a great 
deal of sympathy to be got out of living in 
the same atmosphere, and except for the dif- 
ferences of languages, which puzzled my Amer- 
ican ear very sadly, I could have believed I was 
at home in France or in Italy or in England 
when I was on the streets, when I was in the 
presence of the crowds, when I was in great 
halls where men were gathered together irre- 
spective of class. 

I did not feel quite as much at home there 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 15 

as I do here, but I felt that now, at any rate, 
after this storm of war had cleared the air, 
men were seeing eye to eye ever3rwhere and 
that these were the kind of folks who would 
understand what the kind of folks at home 
would understand and that they were thinking 
the same things. 

I feel about you as I am reminded of a 
story of that excellent wit and good artist, 
Oliver Herford, who one day, sitting at 
luncheon at his club, was slapped vigorously 
on the back by a man whom he did not know 
very well. He said, ''Oliver, old boy, how 
are you?'* He looked at him rather coldly. 
He said, **I don't know your name, I don't 
know your face, but your manners are very 
familiar." And I must say that your manners 
are very familiar, and, let me add, very 
delightful. 

FORCE OF AN IDEA 

It is a great comfort, for one thing, to realize 
that you all understand the language I am 
speaking. A friend of mine said that to talk 
through an interpreter was like witnessing 
the compound fracture of an idea. But the 
beauty of it is that, whatever the impediments 
of the channel of communication, the idea is 
the same, that it gets registered, and it gets 
registered in responsive hearts and receptive 
purposes. 



i6 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

I have come back for a strenuous attempt 
to transact business for a little while in Amer- 
ica, but I have really come back to say to you, 
in all soberness and honesty, that I have been 
trying my best to speak your thoughts. 

When I sample myself I think I find that 
I am a typical American, and if I sample deep 
enough and get down to what is probably the 
true stuff of a man, then I have hope that it 
is part of the stuff that is Hke the other fel- 
low's at home. 

And, therefore, probing deep in my heart 
and trying to see the things that are right, 
without regard to the things that may be de- 
bated as expedient, I feel that I am interpreting 
the purpose and the thought of America; and 
in loving America I find that I have joined 
the great majority of my fellow-men through- 
out the world. 



II 



GOVERNMENT THE SERVANT OF THE PEOPLE 
(Washington, March 3, 1919.) 

Addressing the conference of governors and 
mayors, called together to discuss the labor situ- 
ation, President Wilson said: 

Gentlemen: I wish that I could promise 
myself the pleasure and the profit of taking 
part in your deliberations. I find that nothing 
deliberate is permitted me since my return. 
I have been trying, under the guidance of my 
secretary, Mr. Tumulty, to do a month's work 
in a week, and I am hoping that not all of it 
has been done badly; but inasmuch as there 
is a necessary pressure upon my time, I know 
that you will excuse me from taking a part 
in your conference, much as I should be 
profited by doing so. 

My pleasant duty is to bid you a hearty 
welcome and to express my gratification that 
so many executives of cities and of states 
have found the time and the inclination to 
come together on the very important matter 
we have to discuss. 



i8 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

The primary duty of caring for our people 
in the intimate matters that we want to dis- 
cuss here, of course, falls on the states and 
upon the municipalities, and the function of 
the Federal government is to do what it is 
trying to do in a conference of this sort — draw 
the executive minds of the country together 
so that they may profit by one another's sug- 
gestions and plans, and so that we may offer 
our services to co-ordinate their efforts in 
any way that they may deem it wise to co- 
ordinate. In other words, it is the privilege 
of the Federal government in matters of this 
sort to be the servants of the executives of 
the states and municipalities and counties, 
and we shall perform that duty with the great- 
est pleasure if you will guide us with your 
suggestions. 

WIDE SCOPE NEEDED 

I hope that the discussion of this conference 
will take as wide a scope as you think neces- 
sary. We are met to discuss the proper method 
of restoring all the labor conditions of the 
country to a normal basis as soon as possible, 
and to effect such fresh allocations of labor 
and industry as the circumstances may make 
necessary. I think I can testify, from what 
I have seen on the other side of the water, 
that we are more fortunate than other nations 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 19 

in respect to these great problems. Our in- 
dustries have been disturbed and disorganized 
— disorganized as compared with a peace basis 
very seriously indeed — by the war, but not 
so seriously as the industries of other coun- 
tries; and it seems to me, therefore, that we 
should approach these problems that we are 
about to discuss with a good deal of confidence 
— with a good deal of confidence that if we 
have a common purpose we can realize that 
common purpose without serious or insur- 
mountable difficulties. 



HELP FOR AVERAGE MAN 

The thing that has impressed me most, 
gentlemen, not only in the recent weeks when 
I have been in conference on the other side 
of the water, but for many months before I 
went across the water, was this: We are at 
last learning that the business of government 
is to take counsel for the average man. We 
are at last learning that the whole matter of 
the prosperity of peoples runs down into the 
great body of the men and women who do the 
work of the world and that the process of 
guidance is not completed by the mere suc- 
cess of great enterprises; it is completed only 
by the standard of the benefits that it confers 
upon those who in the obscure ranks of life 
contribute to the success of those enterprises. 



20 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

MANY HEARTS STIRRED 

The hearts of the men and women and 
children of the world are stirred now in a way 
that has never been known before. They are 
not only stirred by their individual circum- 
stances, but they are beginning to get a vision 
of what the general circumstances of the world 
are, and there is for the first time in history 
an international sympathy which is quick and 
vital, a sympathy which does not display 
itself merely in the contact of governments, 
but displays itself in the silent intercourse of 
sympathy between great bodies that consti- 
tute great nations; and the significance of a 
conference like this is that we are expressing 
in it, and will, I believe, express in the results 
of this conference our consciousness that we 
are servants of this great silent mass of people 
who constitute the United States; and that 
as their servants it is our business, as it is 
our privilege, to find out how we can best 
assist in making their lives what they wish 
them to be, giving them the opportunities 
that they ought to have, assisting by public 
counsel in the private affairs upon which the 
happiness of men depends. 

SERVANTS OF PEOPLE 

And so I am the more distressed that I 
cannot take part in these councils because my 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 21 

present business is to understand what plain 
men everywhere want. It is perfectly under- 
stood in Paris that we are not meeting there 
as the masters of anybody — that we are meet- 
ing there as the servants of, I believe it is, 
about seven hundred million people, and that 
unless we show that we understand the busi- 
ness of servants we will not satisfy and we will 
not accomplish the peace of the world, and that 
if we show that we want to serve any interest 
but theirs, we will have become candidates 
for the most lasting discredit that will ever 
attach to men in history. 

And so it is with this profound feeling of 
the significance of the things you are under- 
taking that I bid you welcome, because I 
believe you have come together in the spirit 
which I have tried to indicate, and that we 
will together concert methods of co-operation 
and individual notion which will really ac- 
complish what we wish to see accomplished 
in steadying and easing and facilitating the 
whole labor processes of the United States. 
3 



Ill 



DEFENDING THE LEAGUE CONSTITUTION 
(New York, March 5, igig.) 

At the Metropolitan Opera House, on the eve 
of his second journey to Paris, the President 
spoke as follows: 

My Fellow-citizens : I accept the intima- 
tion of the air just played. I will not come 
back ''Till It's Over, Over There." And yet 
I pray God, in the interest of peace and of 
the world, that that may be soon. 

The first thing that I am going to tell the 
people on the other side of the water is that 
an overwhelming majority of the American 
people is in favor of the League of Nations. 
I know that that is true. I have had un- 
mistakable intimations of it from all parts 
of the country, and the voice rings true in 
every case. 

I count myself fortunate to speak here under 
the unusual circumstances of this evening. I 
am happy to associate myself with Mr. Taft 
in this cause. He has displayed an elevation 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 23 

of view and a devotion to public duty which are 
beyond praise. 



NO PARTY DARE OPPOSE IT 

And I am more happy because this means 
that this is not a party issue. No party has 
the right to appropriate this issue, and no 
party will in the long run dare oppose it. 

We have listened to so clear and admirable 
an exposition of many of the main features 
of the proposed covenant of the League of 
Nations that it is perhaps not necessary for 
me to discuss in any particular way the con- 
tents of the document. I will seek rather to 
give you its setting. 

I do not know when I have been more im- 
pressed than by the conferences of the com- 
mission set up by the conference of peace to 
draw up a covenant for the League of Nations. 
The representatives of fourteen nations sat 
around that board — not new men, not men 
inexperienced in the affairs of their own coun- 
tries, not men inexperienced in the politics of 
the world — and the inspiring influence of every 
meeting was the concurrence of purpose on 
the part of all those men to come to an agree- 
ment, and an effective working agreement, 
with regard to this league of the civilized 
world. 

There was a conviction in the whole im- 



24 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

pulse, there was conviction of more than one 
sort, there was the conviction that this thing 
ought to be done, and there was also the con- 
viction that not a man there would venture 
to go home and say that he had not tried to 
do it. 

Mr. Taft has set the picture for you of 
what a failure of this great purpose would 
mean. We have been hearing for all these 
weary months that this agony of war has 
lasted because of the sinister purpose of the 
Central Empires, and we have made maps of 
the course that they meant their conquests 
to take. Where did the lines of that map lie, 
of that central line that we used to call from 
Bremen to Bagdad? 

WILL WATCH INTRIGUE 

They lay through these very regions to 
which Mr. Taft has called your attention, but 
they lay then through the United Empire, 
through the Austro-Hungarian Empire, whose 
integrity, which Germany was bound to re- 
spect as her ally, lay in the path of that line 
of conquest. The Turkish Empire, whose in- 
terests she professed to make her own, lay 
in the direct path that she intended to 
tread. 

And now what has happened? The Austro- 
Hungarian Empire has gone to pieces and the 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 25 

Turkish Empire has disappeared, and the na- 
tions that effected that great result — for it was 
a result of liberation — are now responsible 
as the trustee of the assets of those great 
nations. 

You not only would have weak nations 
lying in this path, but you would have nations 
in which that old poisonous seed of intrigue 
could be planted with the certainty that the 
crop would be abundant, and one of the things 
that the League of Nations is intended to 
watch is the course of intrigue. 

Intrigue cannot stand publicity, and if the 
League of Nations were nothing but a great 
debating society it would kill intrigue. 

PUBLICITY TO PREVENT WARS 

It is one of the agreements of this covenant 
that it is the friendly right of every nation a 
member of the league to call attention to any- 
thing that it thinks will disturb the peace of 
the world, no matter where that thing is 
occurring. 

There is no subject that may touch the 
peace of the world which is exempt from in- 
quiry and discussion, and I think everybody 
here present will agree with me that Germany 
would never have gone to war if she had per- 
mitted the world to discuss the aggression 
upon Serbia for a single week. 



26 • THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

The British Foreign Office suggested, it 
pleaded that there might be a day or two delay 
so that the representatives of the nations of 
Europe could get together and discuss the 
possibilities of a settlement. Germany did 
not dare permit a day's discussion. You 
know what happened. So soon as the world 
realized that an outlaw was at large the na- 
tions 'began one by one to draw together 
against her. 

We know for a certainty that if Germany 
had thought for a moment that Great Britain 
would go in with France and with Russia 
she never would have undertaken the enter- 
prise. And the League of Nations is meant as 
a notice to all outlaw nations that not only 
Great Britain, but the United States and the 
rest of the world will go in to stop enterprises 
of that sort. 

WHAT THE LEAGUE IS 

And so the League of Nations is nothing 
more nor less than the covenant that the world 
will always maintain the standards which it 
has now vindicated by some of the most 
precious blood ever spilled. 

The liberated peoples of the Austro-Hun- 
garian Empire and of the Turkish Empire call 
out to us for this thing. It has not arisen in 
the council of statesmen, Europe is a bit sicjc 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 27 

at heart at this very moment because it sees 
that statesmen have had no vision and that 
the only vision has been the vision of the 
people. Those who suffer see. Those against 
whom wrong is wrought know how desirable 
is the right and the righteous. 

The nations that have long been under the 
heel of the Austrian, that have long cowered 
before the German, that have long suffered 
the indescribable agonies of being governed 
by the Turk, have called out to the world, 
generation after generation, for justice, for 
liberation, for succor, and no cabinet in the 
world has heard them. 

Private organizations, pitying hearts, phil- 
anthropic men and women have poured out 
their treasure in order to relieve these suffer- 
ings, but no nation has said to the nations re- 
sponsible, *'You must stop; this thing is in- 
tolerable, and we will not permit it," and the 
vision has been with the people. 

My friends, I wish you would reflect upon 
this proposition. The vision as to what is 
necessary for great reforms has seldom come 
from the top in the nations of the world. It 
has come from the need and the aspiration 
and the self-assertion of great bodies of men 
who meant to be free, and I can explain some 
of the criticisms which have been leveled 
against this great enterprise only by the sup- 
position that the men who utter the criti- 



28 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

cisms have never felt the great pulse of the 
heart of the world. 

And I am amazed — not alarmed, but amazed 
— that there should be in some quarters such 
comprehensive ignorance of the state of the 
world. These gentlemen do not know what 
the mind of men is just now. Everybody else 
does. I do not know where they have been 
closeted; I do not know by what influences 
they have been blinded; but I do know that 
they have been separated from the general 
currents of the thoughts of mankind. 

And I want to utter this solemn warning, 
not in the way of a threat; the forces of the 
world do not threaten, they operate. The 
great tides of the world do not give notice 
that they are going to rise and run; they 
rise in their majesty and overwhelming 
might, and those who stand in the way are 
overwhelmed. 

world's heart awake 

Now the heart of the world is awake and 
the heart of the world must be satisfied. Do 
not let yourselves suppose for a moment that 
the uneasiness in the populations of Europe 
is due entirely to economic causes or economic 
motives; something very much deeper under- 
lies it all than that. 

They see that their governments have never 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 29 

been able to defend them against intrigue or 
aggression, and that there is no force of fore- 
sight or of prudence in any modern cabinet to 
stop war. 

And therefore they say, ''There must be 
some fundamental cause for this," and the 
fundamental cause they are beginning to per- 
ceive to be that nations have stood single or 
in little jealous groups against each other, 
fostering prejudice, increasing the danger of 
war, rather than concerting measures to pre- 
vent it ; and that if there is right in the world, 
if there is justice in the world, there is no 
reason why nations should be divided in the 
support of justice. 

They are therefore saying if you really be- 
lieve that there is a right, if you really believe 
that wars ought to be stopped, stop thinking 
about the rival interests of nations and think 
about men and women and children through- 
out the world. 

THE DESTINY OF NATIONS 

Nations are not made to afford distinction 
to their rulers by way of success in the maneu- 
vers of politics; nations are meant, if they are 
meant for anything, to make the men and 
women and children in them secure and happy 
and prosperous, and no nation has the right 
to set up its special interests against the in- 



30 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

terests and benefits of mankind, least of all 
this great nation which we love. 

It was set up for the benefit of mankind; 
it was set up to illustrate the highest ideals 
and to achieve the highest aspirations of men 
who wanted to be free; and the world — the 
world of to-day believes that and counts on 
us, and would be thrown back into the black- 
ness of despair if we deserted it. 

I have tried once and again, my fellow- 
citizens, to say to little circles of friends or to 
larger bodies what seems to be the real hope 
of the peoples of Europe, and I tell you 
frankly I have not been able to do so, be- 
cause when the thought tries to crowd itself 
into speech the profound emotion of the 
thing is too much; speech will not carry. 
I have felt the tragedy of the hope of those 
suffering peoples. 

It is tragedy because it is a hope which 
cannot be realized in its perfection, and yet 
I have felt besides its tragedy, its compulsion, 
its compulsion upon every living man to exer- 
cise every influence that he has to the utmost 
to see that as little as possible of that hope 
is disappointed, because if men cannot now, 
after this agony of bloody sweat, come to 
their self-possession and see how to regulate 
the affairs of the world, we will sink back 
into a period of struggle in which there will 
be no hope, and, therefore, no mercy. 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 31 

THE soldiers' TEMPER 

There can be no mercy where there is no 
hope, for why should you spare another if you 
yourself expect to perish ? Why should you be 
pitiful if you can get no pity ? Why should you 
be just if upon every hand you are put upon? 

There is another thing which I think the 
critics of this covenant have not observed. 
They not only have not observed the temper 
of the world, but they have not even observed 
the temper of those splendid boys in khaki 
that they sent across the seas. I have had the 
proud consciousness of the reflected glory of 
those boys, because the Constitution made 
me their Commander-in-chief, and they have 
taught me some lessons. 

When we went into the war we went into it 
on the basis of declarations which it was my 
privilege to utter, because I believed them to 
be an interpretation of the purpose and thought 
of the people of the United States. 

And those boys went over there with the 
feeling that they were sacredly bound to the 
realization of those ideals; that they were not 
only going over there to beat Germany; they 
were not going over there merely with resent- 
ment in their hearts against a particular out- 
law nation ; but that they were crossing those 
three thousand miles of sea in order to show 
to Europe that the United States, when it 



32 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

became necessary, would go anywhere where 
the rights of mankind were threatened. 

They would not sit still in the trenches. 
They would not be restrained by the prudence 
of experienced continental commanders. They 
thought they had come over there to do a 
particular thing, and they were going to do it 
and do it at once. 

And just as soon as that rush of spirit as 
well as rush of body came in contact with the 
lines of the enemy they began to break, and 
they continued to break until the end. They 
continued to break, my fellow-citizens, not 
merely because of the physical force of those 
lusty youngsters, but because of the irresistible 
spiritual force of the armies of the United 
States. 

SPIRIT AWED THEIR FOES 

It was that they felt. It was that that awed 
them. It was that that made them feel if 
these youngsters ever got a foothold they could 
never be dislodged, and that therefore every 
foot of ground that they won was permanently 
won for the liberty of mankind. 

And do you suppose that having felt that 
crusading spirit of these youngsters, who went 
over there not to glorify America, but to serve 
their fellow-men, I am going to permit myself 
for one moment to slacken in my effort to be 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 33 

worthy of them and their cause? What I said 
at the opening I said with a deeper meaning 
than perhaps you have caught. I do mean not 
to come back until it's over over there, and it 
must not be over until the nations of the world 
are assured of the permanency of peace. 

Gentlemen on this side of the water would 
be very much profited by getting into com- 
munication with some gentlemen on the other 
side of the water. We sometimes think, my 
fellow-citizens, that the experienced states- 
men of the European nations are an unusually 
hard-headed set of men, by which we generally 
mean, although we do not admit it, that they 
are a bit cynical; that they say, "This is a 
very practical world," by which you always 
mean that it is not an ideal world; that they 
do not believe that things can be settled upon 
an ideal basis. 

Well, I never came into intimate contact 
with them before, but if they used to be that 
way they are not that way now. They have 
been subdued, if that was once their temper, 
by the awful significance of recent events and 
the awful importance of what is to ensue; 
and there is not one of them with whom I 
have come in contact who does not feel that 
he cannot in conscience return to his people 
from Paris unless he has done his utmost to 
do something more than attach his name to 
a treaty of peace. 



34 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

THE LEAGUE IS VITAL 

Every man in that conference knows that 
the treaty of peace in itself will be inoperative, 
as Mr. Taft has said, without this constant 
support and energy of a great organization 
such as is supplied by the League of Nations. 

And men who when I first went over there 
were skeptical of the possibility of forming a 
League of Nations admitted that if we could 
but form it, it would be an invaluable instru- 
mentality through which to secure the opera- 
tion of the various parts of the treaty; and 
when that treaty comes back gentlemen on 
this side will find the covenant not only in it, 
but so many threads of the treaty tied to the 
covenant that you cannot dissect the covenant 
from the treaty without destroying the whole 
vital structure. The structure of peace will 
not be vital without the League of Nations, 
and no man is going to bring back a cadaver 
with him. 

I must say that I have been puzzled by some 
of the criticisms — not by the criticisms them- 
selves; I can understand them perfectly, even 
when there was no foundation for them; but 
the fact of the criticism. I cannot imagine 
how these gentlemen can live and not live in 
the atmosphere of the world. 

I cannot imagine how they can live and not 
be in contact with the events of their times, 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 35 

and I particularly cannot imagine how they 

can be Americans and set up a doctrine of 

careful selfishness thought out to the last 
detail. 



CRITICISMS LACK GENEROSITY 

I have heard no counsel of generosity in their 
criticism. I have heard no constructive sug- 
gestion. I have heard nothing except, "Will 
it not be dangerous to us to help the world?" 
It would be fatal to us not to help it. 

From being what I will venture to call the 
most famous and the most powerful nation in 
the world we would of a sudden have become 
the most contemptible. So I did not need to 
be told, as I have been told, that the people 
of the United States wo aid support this cove- 
nant. I am an American and I knew they 
would. 

What a sweet revenge it is upon the world! 
They laughed at us once; they thought we 
did not mean our professions of principle. 
They thought so until April of 191 7. It was 
hardly credible to them that we would do 
more than send a few men over and go through 
the forms of helping; and when they saw 
multitudes hastening across the sea, and saw 
what those multitudes were eager to do when 
they got to the other side, they stood at 
amaze and said, "The thing is real; this 



36 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

nation is the friend of mankind, as it said 
it was." 

The enthusiasm, the hope, the trust, the 
confidence in the future bred by that change 
of view is indescribable. Take an individual 
American and you may often find him selfish 
and confined to his special interests; but take 
the American in the mass and he is willing to 
die for an idea. 

The sweet revenge, therefore, is this, that 
we believed in righteousness, and now we are 
ready to make the supreme sacrifice for it, 
the supreme sacrifice of throwing in our fort- 
unes with the fortunes of men everywhere. 
Mr. Taft was speaking of Washington's utter- 
ance about entangling alliances, and if he will 
permit me to say so, he put the exactly right 
interpretation upon what Washington said, 
the interpretation that is inevitable if you read 
what he said, as most of these gentlemen do 
not. 

EXPLANATIONS NEEDLESS 

The only place a man can feel at home is 
where nothing has to be explained to him. 
Nothing has to be explained to me in America, 
least of all the sentiment of the American 
people. I mean about great fundamental 
things like this. 

There are many differences of judgment as 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 37 

to policy — and perfectly legitimate. Some- 
times profound differences of judgment, but 
those are not differences of sentiment, those 
are not differences of purpose, those are not 
differences of ideals. And the advantage of 
not having to have anything explained to you 
is that you recognize a wrong explanation when 
you hear it. 

In a certain rather abandoned part of the 
frontier at one time it was said they found a 
man who told the truth; he was not found 
telling it, but he could tell it when he heard 
it. And I think I am in that situation with 
regard to some of the criticisms I have heard. 
They do not make any impression on me be- 
cause I know there is no medium that will 
transmit them, that the sentiment of the coun- 
try is proof against such narrowness and such 
selfishness as that. 

I commend these gentlemen to communion 
with their fellow-citizens. 

What are we to say, then, as to the future? 
I think, my fellow-citizens, that we can look 
forward to it with great confidence. I have 
heard cheering news since I came to this side 
of the water about the progress that is being 
made in Paris toward the discussion and clari- 
fication of a great many difficult matters, and 
I believe that settlements will begin to be 
made rather rapidly from this time on at those 

conferences. 
4 



38 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

MEN ARE GATHERING HEART 

But what I believe — ^what I know as well 
as believe — is this: that the men engaged in 
those conferences are gathering heart as they 
go, not losing it; that they are finding com- 
munity of purpose and community of ideal to 
an extent that perhaps they did not expect; 
and that amid all the interplay of influence 
— because it is infinitely complicated — amid 
all the int Aplay of influence there is a forward 
movement which is running toward the right. 

Men have at last perceived that the only 
permanent thing in the world is right, and 
that a wrong settlement is bound to be a 
temporary settlement — bound to be a tem- 
porary settlement for the very best reason of 
all, that it ought to be a temporary settlement, 
and the spirits of men will rebel against it, 
and the spirits of men are now in the saddle. 

When I was in Italy a little limping group 
of wounded Italian soldiers sought an inter- 
view with me. I could not conjecture what it 
was they were going to say to me, and with the 
greatest simplicity, with a touching simplicity, 
they presented me with a petition in favor of 
the League of Nations. 

Their wounded limbs, their impaired vitality, 
were the only arguments they brought with 
them. It was a simple request that I lend all 
the influence that I might happen to have to 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 39 

relieve future generations of the sacrifices that 
they had been obliged to make. 

That appeal has remained in my mind as I 
have ridden along the streets in European 
capitals and heard cries of the crowd, cries 
for the League of Nations from lips of people 
who, I venture to say, had no particular notion 
of how it was to be done, who were not ready 
to propose a plan for a League of Nations, but 
whose hearts said that something by way of a 
combination of all men everywhere must come 
out of this. 

WHAT THE FLOWERS MEANT 

As we drove along the country roads weak 
old women would come out and hold flowers 
to us. Why should they hold flowers up to 
strangers from across the Atlantic? Only be- 
cause they believed that we were the mes- 
sengers of friendship and of hope, and these 
flowers were their humble offerings of gratitude 
that friends from so great a distance should 
have brought them so great a hope. 

It is inconceivable that we should disappoint 
them, and we shall not. The day will come 
when men in America will look back with 
swelling hearts and rising pride that they 
should have been privileged to make the 
sacrifice which it was necessary to make in 
order to combine their might and their moral 



40 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

power with the cause of justice for men of 
every kind everywhere. 

God give us the strength and vision to do it 
wisely. God give us the privilege of knowing 
that we did it without counting the cost, and 
because we were true Americans, lovers of 
liberty and of the right. 



IV 

THE AMENDED COVENANT 
(Paris, March 27, 191Q.) 

President Wilson issued the following state- 
ment: 

In view of the very surprising impression 
which seems to exist in some quarters that it 
is the discussions of the commission on the 
League of Nations that are delaying the final 
formulation of peace, I am very glad to take 
the opportunity of reporting that the con- 
clusions of this commission were the first to 
be laid before the plenary conference. 

They were reported on February 14th, and 
the world has had a full month in which to 
discuss every feature of the draft covenant 
then submitted. 

THE WORK OF REVISION 

During the last few days the commission 
has been engaged in an effort to take advantage 
of the criticisms which the publication of the 
covenant has fortunately drawn out. A com- 
mittee of the commission has also had the 



42 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

advantage of a conference with representatives 
of the neutral states, who are evidencing a 
very deep interest and a practically unanimous 
desire to align themselves with the league. 
The revised covenant is now practically fin- 
ished. It is in the hands of a committee for 
the final process of drafting and will almost im- 
mediately be presented a second time to the 
public. 

The conferences of the commission have in- 
variably been held at times when they could 
not interfere with the consultation of those 
who have undertaken to formulate the general 
conclusions of the conference with regard to 
the many other complicated problems of peace, 
so that the members of the commission con- 
gratulate themselves on the fact that no part 
of their conferences has ever interposed any 
form of delay. 



V 

A STATEMENT 
(Paris, April 14^ iQiQ^) 

A statement by President Wilson in behalf 
of the Council of Four reads: 

In view of the fact that the questions which 
must be settled in the peace with Germany 
have been brought so near a complete solution 
that they can now be quickly put through the 
final process of drafting, those who have been 
most constantly in conference about them have 
decided to advise that the German plenipo- 
tentiaries be invited to meet the representa- 
tives of the associated belligerent nations at 
Versailles on the 25 th of April. 

This does not mean that the many other 
questions connected with the general peace 
settlement will be interrupted, or that their 
consideration, which has long been under way, 
will be retarded. On the contrary, it is ex- 
pected that rapid progress will now be made 
with these questions, so that they may also 
presently be expected to be ready for final 
settlement. 



44 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

A SPEEDY AGREEMENT PREDICTED 

It is hoped that the questions most directly, 
affecting Italy, especially the Adriatic ques- 
tion, can now be brought to a speedy agree- 
ment. The Adriatic questions will be given 
for the time precedence over other questions 
and pressed by continual study to its final 
stage. 

The statements that belong especially to 
the treaty with Germany will in this way be 
got out of the way at the same time that all 
other settlements are being brought to a com- 
plete formulation. It is realized that though 
this process must be followed, all the questions 
of the present great settlement are parts of a 
single whole. 



VI 

THE PRINCIPLES OF PEACE 
(Paris, April 23, 1919.) 

President Wilson issued the following state- 
ment as to the controversy with Italy over the 
Adriatic question: 

In view of the capital importance of the 
questions affected, and in order to throw all 
possible light upon what is involved in their 
settlement, I hope that the following state- 
ment will contribute to the final formation of 
opinion and to a satisfactory solution. 

When Italy entered the war she entered upon 
the basis of a definite private understanding 
with Great Britain and France, now known 
as the Pact of London. Since that time the 
whole face of circumstances has been altered. 
Many other powers, great and small, have 
entered the struggle with no knowledge of 
that private understanding. 

The Austro-Hungarian Empire, then the 
enemy of Europe, and at whose expense the 
Pact of London was to be kept in the event 
of victory, has gone to pieces and no longer 



46 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

exists. Not only that, but the several parts 
of that empire, it is agreed now by Italy and 
all her associates, are to be erected into inde- 
pendent states and associated in a League of 
Nations, not with those who were recently 
our enemies, but with Italy herself and the 
powers that stood with Italy in the great war 
for liberty. 

MUST SAFEGUARD RIGHTS OF SMALL NATIONS 

We are to establish their liberty as well as 
our own. They are to be among the smaller 
states whose interests are henceforth to be 
safeguarded as scrupulously as the interests of 
the most powerful states. 

The war was ended, moreover, by proposing 
to Germany an armistice and peace which 
should be founded on certain clearly defined 
principles which set up a new order of right 
and justice. 

Upon those principles the peace with Ger- 
many has been conceived not only, but for- 
mulated. Upon those principles it will be 
executed. We cannot ask the great body of 
powers to propose and effect peace with Austria 
and establish a new basis of independence and 
right in the states which originally constituted 
the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in the 
states of the Balkan group on principles of 
another kind. We must apply the same prin- 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 47 

ciples to the settlement of Europe in those 
quarters that we have applied in the peace 
with Germany. It was upon the explicit 
avowal of those principles that the initiative 
for peace was taken. It is upon them that 
the whole structure of peace must rest. 

If those principles are to be adhered to, 
Fiume must serve as the outlet of the com- 
merce not of Italy, but of the land to the north 
and northeast of that port: Hungary, Bo- 
hemia, Rumania, and the states of the new 
Jugo-Slav group. 

To assign Fiume to Italy would be to 
create the feeling that we have deliberately 
put the port upon which all those countries 
chiefly depend for their access to the Medi- 
terranean in the hands of a power of which it 
did not form an integral part and whose sov- 
ereignty, if set up there, must inevitably seem 
foreign, not domestic or identified with the 
commercial and industrial life of the regions 
which the port must serve. It is for that 
reason, no doubt, that Fiume was not included 
in the Pact of London, but there definitely 
assigned to the Croatians. 

PACT DESIGNED AS GUARD AGAINST AUSTRIA 

And the reason why the line of the Pact of 
London swept about many of the islands of 
the eastern coast of the Adriatic and around 



48 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

the portion of the Dalmatian coast which lies 
most open to that sea was not only that here 
and there on those islands, and here and there 
on that coast, there are bodies of people of 
Italian blood and connection, but also, and 
no doubt chiefly, because it was felt that it 
was necessary for Italy to have a foothold 
amid the channels of the Eastern Adriatic in 
order that she might make her own coasts 
safe against the naval aggression of Austria- 
Hungary. 

But Austria-Hungary no longer exists. It 
is proposed that the fortifications which the 
Austrian government constructed there shall 
be razed and permanently destroyed. 

It is part also of the new plan of European 
order which centers in the League of Nations 
that the new states erected there shall accept 
a limitation of armaments which puts aggres- 
sion out of the question. There can be no 
fear of the unfair treatment of groups of Italian 
people there, because adequate guarantees will 
be given, under international sanction, of the 
equal and equitable treatment of all racial or 
national minorities. 

In brief, every question associated with this 
settlement wears a new aspect — a new aspect 
given it by the very victory for right for which 
Italy has made the supreme sacrifice of blood 
and treasure. Italy, along with the four other 
great powers, has become one of the chief 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 49 

trustees of the new order which she has played 
so honorable a part in establishing. 



Italy's other frontiers restored 

And on the north and northeast her natural 
frontiers are completely restored, along the 
whole sweep of the Alps from northeast to 
southeast to the very end of the Istrian Pen- 
insula, including all the great watershed within 
which Trieste and Pola lie, and all the fair 
regions whose face nature has turned toward 
the great peninsula upon which the historic 
life of the Latin people has been worked out 
through centuries of famous story ever since 
Rome was first set upon her seven hills. 

Her ancient unity is restored. Her lines 
are extended to the great walls which are her 
natural defense. It is within her choice to 
be surrounded by friends; to exhibit to the 
newly liberated peoples across the Adriatic 
that noblest quality of greatness, magna- 
nimity, friendly generosity, the preference of 
justice over interest. 

The nations associated with her, the nations 
that know nothing of the Pact of London or 
of any other special understanding that lies 
at the beginning of this great struggle, and who 
have made their supreme sacrifice also in the 
interest not of national advantage or defense, 
but of the settled peace of the world, are now 



so THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

united with her older associates in urging her 
to assume a leadership which cannot be mis- 
taken in the new order of Europe. 



AMERICA S DUTY TO INSIST ON JUSTICE 

America is Italy's friend. Her people are 
drawn, millions strong, from Italy's own fair 
countryside. She is linked in blood, as well 
as in affection, with the Italian people. Such 
ties can never be broken. And America was 
privileged by the generous commission of her 
associates in the war to initiate the peace we 
are about to consummate — to initiate it upon 
terms which she had herself formulated and 
in which I was her spokesman. 

The compulsion is upon her to square every 
decision she takes a part in with those prin- 
ciples. She can do nothing else. She trusts 
Italy, and in her trust believes that Italy will 
ask nothing of her that cannot be made un- 
mistakably consistent with those sacred ob- 
ligations. 

The interests are not now in question, but 
the rights of peoples, of states new and old, 
of liberated peoples and peoples whose rulers 
have never accounted them worthy of a right ; 
above all, the right of the world to peace and 
to such settlements of interest as shall make 
peace secure. 

These, and these only, are the principles 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 51 

for which America has fought. These, and 
these only, are the principles upon which she 
can consent to make peace. Only upon these 
principles, she hopes and believes, will the 
people of Italy ask her to make peace. 



VII 

THE NEW LEAGUE COVENANT 
(Paris, April 2S, 1919.) 

Following is ike text of President Wilson* s 
speech before the plenary session of the Peace 
Conference: 

Mr. President: Wlicn the text of the 
covenant of the League of Nations was laid 
before you I had the honor of reading the 
covenant in extenso. I will not detain you 
to-day to read the covenant as it has now been 
altered, but will merely take the liberty of 
explaining to you some of the alterations that 
have been made. 

The report of the commission has been cir- 
culated. You yourselves have in hand the 
text of the covenant, and will no doubt have 
noticed that most of the changes that have 
been made are mere changes of phraseology, 
not changes of substance; and that, besides 
that, most of the changes are intended to 
clarify the document, or, rather, to make ex- 
plicit what we all have assiuned was implicit in 
the document as it was originally presented to 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 53 

you. But I shall take the liberty of calling 
your attention to the new features, such as they 
are. Some of them are considerable, the rest 
trivial. 



CHANGES MADE NECESSARY 

The first paragraph of Article I is new. In 
view of the insertion of the covenant in the 
peace treaty, specific provision as to the signa- 
tories of the treaty, who would become mem- 
bers of the league, and also as to neutral states 
to be invited to accede to the covenant, were 
obviously necessary. The paragraph also pro- 
vides for the method by which a neutral state 
may accede to the covenant. 

The third paragraph of Article I is new, pro- 
viding for the withdrawal of any member of 
the league on a notice given of two years. 

The second paragraph of Article IV is new, 
providing for a possible increase in the council, 
should other powers be added to the League 
of Nations whose present accession is not 
anticipated. 

The last two paragraphs of Article IV are 

new, providing specifically for one vote for 

each member of the league in the council, 

which was understood before, and providing 

also for one representative of each member of 

the league. 

The first paragraph of Article V is new, ex- 
5 



54 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

pressly incorporating the provision as to the 
unanimity of voting, which was at first taken 
for granted. 

The second paragraph of Article VI has 
had added to it that a majority of the assem- 
bly must approve the appointment of the 
secretary-general. 

CAPITAL OF THE LEAGUE 

The first paragraph of Article VII names 
Geneva as the seat of the league and is fol- 
lowed by a second paragraph which gives the 
council power to establish the seat of the 
league elsewhere should it subsequently deem 
it necessary. 

The third paragraph of Article VII is new, 
establishing equality of employment of men 
and women — that is to say, by the league. 

The second paragraph of Article XIII is 
new, inasmuch as it undertakes to give in- 
stances of disputes which are generally suit- 
able for submission to arbitration, instances 
of what have been called "justiciable" ques- 
tions. 

The eighth paragraph of Article XV is new. 
This is the amendment regarding domestic 
jurisdiction, that where the council finds that 
a question arising out of an international dis- 
pute affects matters which are clearly under 
the domestic jurisdiction of one or other of the 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 55 

parties it is to report to that effect and make 
no recommendation. 

The last paragraph of Article XVI is new, 
providing for expulsion from the league in 
certain extraordinary circumstances. 

Article XXI is new. 



THE PRINCIPLE OF MANDATORIES 

The second paragraph of Article XXII in- 
serts the words with regard to mandatories, 
''and who are willing to accept it," thus ex- 
plicitly introducing the principle that a man- 
date cannot be forced upon a nation unwill- 
ing to accept it. 

Article XIII is a combination of several 
former articles, and also contains the following : 
A clause providing for the just treatment of 
aborigines; a clause looking toward a pre- 
vention of the white-slave traffic and the 
traffic in opium, and a clause looking toward 
progress in international prevention and con- 
trol of disease. 

Article XXV specifically mentions the Red 
Cross as one of the international organiza- 
tions which are to connect their work with 
the work of the league. 

Article XXVI permits the amendment of 
the covenant by a majority of the states com- 
posing the assembly, instead of three-fourths 
of the states, though it does not change the 



56 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

requirement in that matter with regard to the 
vote in the council. 

The second paragraph of Article XXVI is 
also new, and was added at the request of the 
Brazilian delegation in order to avoid certain 
constitutional difficulties. It permits any 
member of the league to dissent from an 
amendment, the effect of such dissent being 
withdrawal from the league. 

And the annex is added, giving the names of 
the signatories of the treaty, who become 
members, and the names of the states invited 
to accede to the covenant. These are all the 
changes, I believe, which are of moment. 

Mr. President, I take the opportunity to 
move the following resolutions in order to 
carry out the provisions of the covenant. 
You will notice that the covenant provides 
that the first secretary-general shall be chosen 
by this conference. It also provides that the 
first choice of the four member states who 
are to be added to the five great powers on 
the council is left to this conference. 

THE SECRETARY-GENERAL NOMINATED 

I move, therefore, that the first secretary- 
general of the council shall be the Honorable 
Sir James Eric Drummond, and, second, that 
until such time as the assembly shall have 
selected the first four members of the league 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 57 

to be represented on the council in accordance 
with Article IV of the covenant, representa- 
tives of Belgium, Brazil, Greece, and Spain 
shall be members; and, third, that the powers 
to be represented on the council of the League 
of Nations are requested to name representa- 
tives who shall form a committee of nine to 
prepare plans for the organization of the 
league and for the establishment of the seat 
of the league and to make arrangements 
and to prepare the agenda for the first 
meeting of the assembly, this committee to 
report both to the council and to the assembly 
of the league. 

I think it not necessary to call your attention 
to other matters we have previously discussed 
— the capital significance of this covenant, 
the hopes which are entertained as to the 
effect it will have upon steadying the affairs 
of the world, and the obvious necessity that 
there should be a concert of the free nations 
of the world to maintain justice in interna- 
tional relations, the relations between people 
and between the nations of the world. 

A PROPOSED AMENDMENT 

If Baron Makino will pardon me for intro- 
ducing a matter which I absent-mindedly over- 
looked, it is necessary for me to propose the 
alteration of several words in the first line of 



58 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

Article V. Let me say that in several parts 
of the treaty, of which this covenant will form 
a part, certain duties are assigned to the coun- 
cil of the League of Nations. In some instances 
it is provided that the action they shall take 
shall be by a majority vote. It is therefore 
necessary to make the covenant conform with 
the other portions of the treaty by adding 
these words. I will read the first line and add 
the words: 

Except where otherwise expressly provided 
in this covenant, or by the terms of this treaty, 
decisions at any meeting of the assembly or 
of the council shall require the agreement of 
all the members of the league represented at 
the meeting. 

''Except where otherwise expressly provided 
in this covenant," is the present reading, and 
I move the addition, "or by the terms of this 
treaty." With that addition, I move the 
adoption of the covenant. 



VIII 

A MEMORANDUM TO ORLANDO 
(Paris, April 2Q, 191 9.) 

Following is the memorandum sent by Presi- 
dent Wilson, on April 14th, to the Italian dele- 
gation to the Peace Conference: 

There is no question to which I have given 
more careful or anxious thought than I have 
given to this, because in common with all my 
colleagues it is my earnest desire to see the 
utmost done for Italy. 

Throughout my consideration of it, however, 
I have felt that there was one matter in which 
I had no choice and could wish to have none. 
I felt bound to square every conclusion that 
I should reach as accurately as possible with 
the fourteen principles of peace which I set 
forth in my address to the Congress of the 
United States on the 8th of January, 1918, 
and in subsequent addresses. 

ONE PEACE FOR ALL 

These fourteen points and the principles 
l^i4 down in the subsequent addresses were 



6o THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

formally adopted, with only a single reserva- 
tion, by the powers associated against Germany 
and will constitute the basis of peace with 
Germany. I do not feel at liberty to suggest 
one basis for peace with Germany and another 
for peace with Austria. 

It will be remembered that in reply to a 
communication from the Austrian govern- 
ment offering to enter into negotiations for 
an armistice and peace on the basis of the 
fourteen points to which I have alluded I said 
that there was one matter to which those 
points no longer applied. They had demanded 
autonomy for the several states which had 
constituted parts of the Austro-Hungarian 
Empire, and I pointed out that it must now 
be left to the choice of the people of these 
several countries what their destinies and 
political relations should be. 

They have chosen with the sympathy of the 
whole world to be set up as independent states. 
Their complete separation from Austria and 
the complete dissolution of the Austro-Hun- 
garian Empire has given a new aspect and sig- 
nificance to the settlements which may be 
effected with regard, at any rate, to the eastern 
boundaries of Italy. 

Personally, I am quite willing that Italy 
should be accorded along the whole front of 
her northern frontier, and wherever she comes 
into contact with Austrian territory, all that 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 6i 

was accorded her in the so-called Pact of 
London, but I am of the clear opinion that the 
Pact of London can no longer apply to the 
settlement of her eastern boundaries. 



THE PACT OP LONDON 

The line drawn in the Pact of London was 
conceived for the purpose of establishing an 
absolutely adequate frontier of safety for 
Italy against any possible hostility or aggres- 
sion on the part of Austria. But Austria- 
Hungary no longer exists. These eastern 
frontiers will touch countries stripped of the 
military and naval power of Austria, settled in 
interdependence of Austria and organized for 
the purpose of satisfying legitimate national 
aspirations, and created states not hostile to 
the new European order, but arising out of 
it, interested in its maintenance, dependent 
upon the cultivation of friendship, and bound 
to a common policy of peace and accom- 
modation by the covenant of the League of 
Nations. 

It is with these facts in mind that I have 
approached the Adriatic question. It is com- 
monly agreed, and I very heartily adhere to 
the agreement, that the ports of Trieste and 
Pola, and with them the greater part of the 
Istrian Peninsula, should be ceded to Italy, her 
eastern frontier running along the natural 



62 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

strategic line established by the physical con- 
formation of the country — a line which it has 
been attempted to draw with some degree of 
accuracy on the map. 

Within this line on the Italian side will lie 
considerable bodies of non-Italian populations, 
but their fortunes are so naturally linked by 
the nature of the country itself with the rest 
of the Italian people that I think their inclusion 
is fully justified. 

FlUME AN INTERNATIONAL PORT 

There would be no justification, in my judg- 
ment, in including Fiume, or any part of the 
coast-line to the south of Fiume, within the 
boundaries of the Italian kingdom. Fiume is 
by situation and by all the circumstances of 
its development not an Italian, but an inter- 
national, port, serving the countries to the 
east and north of the Gulf of Fiume. 

Just because it is an international port and 
cannot with justice be subordinated to any one 
sovereignty, it is my clear judgment that it 
should enjoy a very considerable degree of 
genuine autonomy, and while it should be in- 
cluded, no doubt, within the customs system of 
the new Jugoslavic state, it should, neverthe- 
less, be left free in its own interest and in the 
interest of the states lying about it, to devote 
itself to thQ service of th^ commerce which 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 63 

naturally and inevitably seeks an outlet or in- 
let at its port. 

The states which it serves will be new states. 
They will have complete confidence in their 
access to an outlet on the sea. The friend- 
ship and the connections of the future will 
largely depend upon such an arrangement 
as I have suggested, and friendship, co- 
operation, and freedom of action must under- 
lie every arrangement of peace if peace is to 
be lasting. 

I believe there will be common agreement 
that the island of Lissa should be ceded to 
Italy, and that she should retain the port of 
Volpna. I believe that it will be generally 
agreed that the fortifications which the Aus- 
trian government established upon the islands 
near the eastern coast of the Adriatic should 
be permanently dispensed with under inter- 
national guaranty, and that the disarmament 
which is to be arranged under the League of 
Nations should limit the states on the eastern 
coast of the Adriatic to only such minor naval 
forces as are necessary for policing the waters 
of the islands and the coast. These are con- 
clusions which I am forced to by compulsion 
of the understandings which underlie the 
whole initiation of the present peace. 

No other conclusions seem to be susceptible 
to being rendered concise with these under- 
standings. They were undervStandings accepted 



64 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

by the whole world, and bear with peculiar 
compulsion upon the United States, because 
the privilege was accorded her of taking the 
initiative of bringing about the negotiations 
for peace, and her plans underlie the whole 
difficult business. 



Italy's great historic object 

And certainly Italy obtains under such a 
settlement the great historic object which her 
people have so long had in mind. The histori- 
cal wrongs inflicted upon her by Austria-Hun- 
gary and by a long series of unjust transactions, 
which I hope will before long sink out of the 
memory of man, are completely redressed. 
Nothing is denied her which will complete her 
national unity. 

Here and there upon the islands of the Adri- 
atic and upon the eastern coast of that sea 
there are settlements containing large Italian 
elements of population, but the pledge under 
which the new states enter the family of 
nations will abundantly safeguard the liberty, 
the development, and all the* just rights of 
national and racial minorities, and back of 
these safeguards will always lie the watchful 
authority of the League of Nations. 

And at the v^ery outset we shall have avoided 
the fatal error of making Italy's nearest neigh- 
bors on her east her enemies and nursing just 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 65 

such a sense of injustice as has disturbed the 
peace of Europe for generations together and 
played no small part in bringing on the ter- 
rible conflict through which we have just 
passed. 



IX 

A PROCLAMATION 
(Paris, May /, 1919.) 

President Wilson's appeal in favor of the 
drive to secure associate members of the Boy 
Scout organization reads as follows: 

The Boy Scouts of America have rendered 
notable service to the nation during the World 
War. They have done effective work in the 
Liberty Loan and War Savings campaigns, 
in discovering and reporting upon the black- 
walnut supply, in co-operating with the Red 
Cross and other war-work agencies, in acting 
as despatch-bearers for the Committee on Pub- 
lic Information, and in other important fields. 
The Boy Scouts have not only demonstrated 
their worth to the nation, but have also ma- 
terially contributed to a deeper appreciation 
by the American people of the higher concep- 
tion of patriotism and good citizenship. 

The Boy Scout movement should not only 
be preserved, but strengthened. It deserves 
the support of all public-spirited citizens. The 
available means for the Boy Scout movement 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS (y^ 

have thus far sufficed for the organization 
and training of only a small proportion of the 
boys of the country. There are approximately 
ten million boys in the United States between 
the ages of twelve and twenty-one. Of these 
only three hundred and seventy-five thousand 
arc enrolled as members of the Boy Scouts of 
America. 

America cannot acquit herself commensur- 
ately with her power and influence in the great 
period now facing her and the world unless 
the boys of America are given better oppor- 
tunities than heretofore to prepare themselves 
for the responsibilities of citizenship. 

Every nation depends for its future upon the 
proper training and development of its youth. 
The American boy must have the best training 
and discipline our great democracy can provide 
if America is to maintain her ideals, her stand- 
ards and her influence in the world. 

The plan, therefore, for a Boy Scout week 
during which a universal appeal will be made 
to all Americans to supply the means to put 
the Boy Scouts of America in a position to 
carry forward effectively and continuously the 
splendid work they are doing for the youth of 
America should have the unreserved support 
of the nation. 

Therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President 
of the United States of America, do hereby 
recommend that the period beginning Sunday, 



68 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

June 8th, to Flag Day, June 14th, be observed 
as Boy Scout Week through the United States 
for the purpose of strengthening the work of 
the Boy vSeouts of America. 

I earnestly recommend that in every com- 
munity a Citizens* Committee, under the 
leadership of a National Citizens' Committee, 
be organized to co-operate in carrying out 
a program for a definite recognition of the 
effective services rendered by the Boy Scouts 
of America; for a survey of the facts relating 
to the boyhood of each community; in order 
that with the co-operation of churches, schools, 
and other organizations definitely engaged in 
work for boys, adequate provision may be 
made for extending the 13oy Scout program to 
a larger proportion of American boyhood. 

The Boy Scout movement offers unusual 
opportunity for volunteer service. It needs 
men to act as committee-men and as leaders 
of groups of boys. I hope that all who can 
will enlist for such personal service, enroll as 
associate members, and give all possible finan- 
cial assistance to this worthy organization of 
American boyhood. Anything that is done to 
increase the effectiveness of the Boy Scouts 
of America will be a genuine contribution to 
the welfare of the nation. 

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my 
hand and caused the seal of the United States 
to be affixed. 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 69 

Done this first day of May in the year of 
our Lord one thousand nine hundred and nine- 
teen, and of the independence of the United 
States of America the one hundred and forty- 
third. 

WooDRow Wilson. 
By the President: 
Robert Lansing, 
Secretary of State, 



X 

AMERICA IS READY 
(Paris, May lo, 1919.) 

Speaking at the session of the Academy of 
Moral and Political Science y President Wilson 
said: 

Sir Thomas and Gentlemen: I esteem it 
a very great pleasure to find myself in this 
distinguished company and in this companion- 
ship of letters. Sir Thomas has been peculiarly 
generous, as have the gentlemen at the other 
end of the table, in what they have said of me, 
but they have given me too high a role to play 
up to. It is particularly difficult to believe 
oneself to be what has been described in so 
intimate a company as this. When a great 
body of people is present, one can assume a 
pose which is impossible when there is so 
small a number of critical eyes looking directly 
at you. 

And yet there was one part of Sir Thomas's 
generous interpretation which was true. What 
I have tried to do, and what I have said in 
speaking for America, was to speak the mind 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 71 

of America, to speak the impulse and the 
principles of America. And the only proof I 
has^e of my success is that the spirit of America 
responded — responded without stint or limit 
— and proved that it was ready to do that 
thing which I was privileged to call upon it 
to do, 

A GUIDE FOR THE FUTURE 

And we have illustrated in this spirit of 
America something which perhaps may serve 
as a partial guide for the future. May I say 
that one of the things that have disturbed me 
in recent months is the unqualified hope that 
men have entertained everywhere of imme- 
diate emancipation from the things that have 
hampered and oppressed them. You cannot 
in human experience rush into the light. You 
have to go through the twilight into the 
broadening day before the noon comes and the 
full sun is on the landscape; and we must see 
to it that those who hope are not disappointed, 
by showing them the processes by which that 
hope must be realized — processes of law, proc- 
esses of slow disentanglement from the many 
things that have bound us in the past. 

You cannot throw off the habits of society 
immediately, any more than you can throw off 
the habits of the individual immediately. 
They must be slowly got rid of, or, rather, they 
must be slowly altered. They must be slowly 



72 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

adapted, they must be slowly shapen to the 
new ends for which we would use them. That 
is the process of law, if law is intelligently 
conceived. 

I thought it a privilege to come here to-night, 
because your studies were devoted to one of 
the things which will be of most consequence 
to men in the future, the intelligent develop- 
ment of international law. In one sense, this 
great, unprecedented war was fought to give 
validity to international law, to prove that it 
has a reality which no nation could afford to 
disregard; that, while it did not have the ordi- 
nary sanctions, while there was no international 
authority as yet to enforce it, it nevertheless 
had something behind it which was greater 
than that, the moral rectitude of mankind. 

A NEW INTERNATIONAL LAW 

If we can now give to international law the 
kind of vitality which it can have only if it 
is a real expression of our moral judgment, we 
shall have completed in some sense the work 
which this war was intended to emphasize. 

International law has perhaps sometimes 
been a little too much thought out in the 
closet. International law has — may I say it 
without offense? — been handled too exclusively 
by lawyers. Lawyers like definite lines. They 
like systematic arrangements. They are un- 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 73 

easy if they depart from what was done yes- 
terday. They dread experiments. They like 
charted seas, and, if they have no charts, 
hardly venture to undertake the voyage. 

Now we must venture upon uncharted seas, 
to some extent, in the future. In the new 
League of Nations we are starting out on un- 
charted seas, and, therefore, we must have, I 
will not say the audacity, but the steadiness of 
purpose which is necessary in such novel cir- 
cumstances. And we must not be afraid of 
new things, at the same time that we must not 
be intolerant of old things. We must weave 
out of the old materials the new garments 
which it is necessary that men should wear. 

world's heart under plain jacket 

It is a great pri\ ilege if we can do that kind 
of thinking for mankind — human thinking, 
thinking that is made up of comprehension of 
the needs of mankind. And when I think of 
mankind I must say I do not always think of 
well-dressed persons. Most persons are not 
well dressed. The heart of the world is under 
very plain jackets, the heart of the world is 
at very simple firesides, the heart of the world 
is in very humble circumstances; and, unless 
you know the pressure of life of the humbler 
classes, you know nothing of life whatever. 
Unless you know where the pinch comes yoa 



74 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

do not know what the pulse has to stand, you 
do not know what strain the muscles have to 
bear, you do not know what trial the nerves 
have to go through to hold on. 

To hold on where there is no glee in life is 
the hard thing. Those of us who can sit some- 
times at leisure and read pleasant books and 
think of the past, the long past, that we have 
no part in, and project the long future — we 
are not specimens of mankind. The specimens 
of mankind have no time to do that, and we 
must use our leisure, when we have it, to feel 
with them and think for them, so that we can 
translate their desire into a fact, so far as that 
is possible, and see that that most complicated 
and elusive of all things which we call justice 
is accomplished. An easy word to say, and a 
noble word upon the tongue, but one of the 
most difficult enterprises of the human spirit. 



JUSTICE FOR ALL MEN 

If it IS hard to be just to those with whom 
you are intimate; how much harder it is to 
conceive the problems of those with whom you 
are not intimate, and be just to them. To 
live and let live, to work for people and with 
people, is at the bottom of the kind of experi- 
ence which must underlie justice. 

The sympathy that has the slightest touch 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 75 

of condescension in it has no touch of helpful- 
ness abodt it. If you are aware of stooping 
to help a man you cannot help him. You 
mast realize that he stands on the same earth 
with yo arse If and has a heart hke your own, 
and that you are helping him, standing on 
that common level and using that common 
impulse of humanity. 

In a sense, the old enterprise of national law 
is played out. I mean that the future of man- 
kind depends more upon the relations of na- 
tions to one another, more upon the realiza- 
tion of the common brotherhood of mankind^ 
than upon the sejmrate and selfish develop- 
ment of national systems of law; so that the 
men who can, if I may express it so, think 
without language, think the common thoughts 
of humanity, are the men who will be most 
serviceable in the immediate future. 

God grant that there may be many of them, 
that many men may see this hope and wish 
to advance it, and that the plain men every- 
where may know that there is no language of 
society in which he has no brothers or colabor- 
ers, in order to reach the great ends of equity 
and of high justice. 

The President continued with a strong dis- 
claimer of the idea that the American people 
were largely materialists or dollar -worshipers. 
He went on to say: 



76 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

I have had in recent months one very deep 
sense of privilege. I have been keenly aware 
that there have been times when the peoples 
of Europe haven't understood the people of 
the United States. We have been too often 
supposed to have been devoted chiefly, if not 
entirely, to material enterprises. We have 
been supposed, in the common phrase, to 
worship the almighty dollar. 

We have accumulated wealth, sir, we have 
devoted ourselves to material enterprises with 
extraordinary success, but there has underlain 
all of that, all the time, a common sense of 
humanity and a common sympathy with the 
high principles of justice, which has never 
grown dim in the field even of enterprise; 
and it has been my very great joy in these 
recent m.onths to interpret the people of the 
United States to the people of the world. 

The President asserted that the American peo- 
ple yWho came into the world consecrated to liberty, 
were ready to cast in their lot in common with 
the lot oj those whose liberty is threatened wherever 
the cause of liberty was seen to be imperiled; 
he added: 

This is the spirit of the people of the United 
States, and they have been privileged to send 
two million men over here to tell you so. 
It has been their great privilege not merely 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS ^^ 

to tell you so in words, but to tell you so in 
men and material — the pouring out of their 
wealth and the offering of their blood. 

A great many of my colleagues in American 
university life got their training, even in polit- 
ical science, as so many men in civil circles 
did, in German universities. I have been 
obliged at various times to read a great deal of 
bad German, difficult German, awkward Ger- 
man, and I have been aware that the thought 
was as awkward as the phrase, that the thought 
was rooted in a fundamental misconception 
of the state of the political life of peoples. 

CORRECTING WRONG IDEAS 

And it has been a portion of my effort to 
disengage the thought of American university 
teachers from the misg aided instruction which 
they have received on this side of the sea. 
Their American spirit anticipated most of 
them, as a matter of course, but the form of 
the thought sometimes misled them. They 
speak too often of the state as a thing which 
would ignore the individual, as a thing which 
was privileged to dominate the fortune of men 
by a sort of inherent and sacred authority. 

Now, as an utter Democrat, I have never 
been able to accept that view of the state. My 
view of the state is that it must stop and listen 
to what I have to say, no matter how humble 



78 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

I am, and that each man has the right to have 
his voice heard and his counsel heeded, in so 
far as it is worthy of him. 

1 have always been among those who be- 
lieve that the greatest freedom of speech was 
the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool 
the best thing to do is to encourage him to 
advertise the fact by speaking. It cannot be 
so easily discovered if you allow him to remain 
silent and look wise, but if you let him speak 
the secret is out and the world knows that he 
is a fool. 



BENEFITS OF FREE SPEECH 

So it is by the exposure of folly that it is 
defeated, not by the seclusion of folly; and 
in this free air of free speech men get into 
that sort of communication with one another 
which constitutes the basis of all common 
achievement. France, through many vicissi- 
tudes and through many bitter experiences, 
found the way to this sort of freedom, and now 
she stands at the front of the world as the 
representative of constitutional liberty. 



XI 

DOMESTIC LEGISLATION 
(Paris, May 20, 191 9.) 

The President's Message to the Congress was 
transmitted by cable. The text follows : 

Gentlemen of the Congress: I deeply 
regret my inability to be present at the open- 
ing of the extraordinary session of the Con- 
gress. It still seems to be my duty to take part 
in the counsels of the Peace Conference and 
contribute what I can to the solution of the 
innumerable questions to whose settlement it 
has had to address itself. For they are ques- 
tions which affect the peace of the whole 
world, and from them, therefore, the United 
States cannot stand apart. I deemed it my 
duty to call the Congress together at this time 
because it was not wise to postpone longer the 
provisions which must be made for the sup- 
port of the government. Many of the ap- 
propriations which are absolutely necessary 
for the maintenance of the government and 
the fulfilment of its varied obligations for 



8o THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

the fiscal year 1919-20 have not yet been made^ 
the end of the present fiscal year is at hand, 
and action upon these appropriations can no 
longer be prudently delayed. It is necessary, 
therefore, that I should immediately call your 
attention to this critical need. It is hardly 
necessary for me to urge that it may receive 
your prompt attention. 

PEACE SUBJECTS LATER 

I shall take the liberty of addressing you on 
my return on the subjects which have most en- 
grossed our attention and the attention of the 
world during these last anxious months, since 
the armistice of last November was signed, the 
international settlements which must form the 
subject-matter of the present treaties of peace 
of the immediate future. It would be prema- 
ture to discuss them or to express a judgment 
about them before they are brought to their 
complete formulation by the agreements which 
are now being sought at the table of the con- 
ference. I shall hope to lay them before you 
in their many aspects so soon as arrangements 
have been reached. 

I hesitate to venture any opinion or press 
any recommendation with regard to domestic 
legislation while absent from the United States 
and out of daily touch with intimate sources 
of information and counsel. I am conscious 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 8i 

that I need, after so long an absence from 
Washington, to seek the advice of those who 
have remained in constant touch with domestic 
problems and who have known them close at 
hand from day to day; and I trust that it 
will very soon be possible for me to do so. 
But there are several questions pressing for 
consideration, to which I feel that I may, and 
indeed must, even now direct your attention, 
if only in general terms. In speaking of them 
I shall, I dare say, be doing little more than 
speak your own thoughts. I hope that I shall 
speak your own judgment also. 

THE LABOR QUESTON 

The question which stands at the front of 
all others in every country amid the present 
great awakening is the question of labor; and 
perhaps I can speak of it with as great ad- 
vantage while engrossed in the consideration 
of interests which affect all countries alike as 
I could at home and amid the interests which 
naturally most affect my thought, because 
they are the interests of our own people. 

By the question of labor I do not mean the 
question of efficient industrial productioa, the 
question of how labor is to be obtained and 
made effective in the great process of sustain- 
ing population and winning success amid com- 
mercial and industrial rivalries. I mean that 



82 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

much greater and more vital question: How 
are the men and women who do the daily 
labor of the world to obtain progressive im- 
provement in the conditions of their labor, 
to be made happier, and to be served better 
by the communities and the industries which 
their labor sustains and advances? How are 
they to be given their right advantage as 
citizens and human beings? 

We cannot go any farther in our present 
direction. We have already gone too far. 
We cannot live our right life as a nation or 
achieve our proper success as an industrial 
community if capital and labor are to continue 
to be antagonistic instead of being partners; 
if they are to continue to distrust one another 
and contrive how they can get the better of 
one another ; or what perhaps amounts to the 
same thing, calculate by what form and degree 
of coercion they can manage to extort, on the 
one hand, work enough to make enterprise 
profitable; on the other, justice and fair treat- 
ment enough to make life tolerable. That 
bad road has turned out a blind alley. It is 
no thoroughfare to real prosperity. We must 
find another, leading in another direction, and 
to a very different destination. It must lead 
not merely to accommodation, but also to 
a genuine co-operation and partnership based 
upon a real community of interest and partici- 
pation in control. 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 83 

CAPITAL AND LABOR AS PARTNERS 

There is now, in fact, a real community 
of interest between capital and labor, but it 
has never been made evident in action. It 
can be made operative and manifest only in 
a new organization of industry. The genius 
of our business men and the sound practical 
sense of our workers can certainly work such 
a partnership out when once they realize 
exactly what it is that they seek and sincerely 
adopt a common purpose with regard to it. 

Labor legislation lies, of course, chiefly with 
the states; but the new spirit and method 
of organization which must be effected are 
not to be brought about by legislation so much 
as by the common counsel and voluntary 
co-operation of capitalist, manager, and work- 
man. Legislation can go only a very little 
way in commanding what shall be done. The 
organization of industry is a matter of corpo- 
rate and individual initiative and of practical 
business arrangement. Those who really de- 
sire a new relationship between capital and 
labor can readily find a way to bring it about, 
and perhaps Federal legislation can help more 
than state legislation could. 

DEMOCRATIZATION OF INDUSTRY 

The object of all reform in this essential 
matter must be the genuine democratization 



84 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

of industry, based upon a full recognition of 
the right of those who work, in whatever rank, 
to participate in some organic way in every 
decision which directly affects their welfare 
or the part they are to play in industry. Some 
positive legislation is practicable. The Con- 
gress has already shown the way to one reform 
which should be world-wide, by establishing 
the eight-hour day as the standard day in 
every field of labor over which it can exercise 
control. It has sought to find the way to pre- 
vent child labor, and will, I hope and believe, 
presently find it. It has served the whole 
country by leading the way in developing the 
means of preserving and safeguarding life and 
health in dangerous industries. It can now 
help in the difficult task of giving a new form 
and spirit to industrial organization by co- 
ordinating the several agencies of conciliation 
and adjustment which have been brought into 
existence by the difficulties and mistaken 
policies of the present management of industry, 
and by setting up and developing new Federal 
agencies of service and information which may 
serve as a clearing-house for the best experi- 
ments and the best thought on this great 
matter, upon which every thinking man must 
be aware that the future development of 
society directly depends. Agencies of in- 
ternational counsel and suggestion are pres- 
ently to be created in connection with the 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 85 

League of Nations in this very field; but it is 
national action and the enlightened policy of 
individuals, corporations, and societies within 
each nation that must bring about the actual 
reforms. The members of the committees on 
labor in the two Houses will hardly need sug- 
gestions from me as to what means they shall 
seek to make the Federal government the agent 
of the whole nation in pointing out and, if 
need be, guiding the process of reorganization 
and reform. 



AID FOR RETURNING SOLDIERS 

I am sure that it is not necessary for me to 
remind you that there is one immediate and 
very practical question of labor that we should 
meet in the most liberal spirit. We must see 
to it that our returning soldiers are assisted 
in every practicable way to find the places 
for which they are fitted in the daily work 
of the country. This can be done by develop- 
ing and maintaining upon an adequate scale 
the admirable organization created by the 
Department of Labor for placing men seek- 
ing work; and it can also be done, in at least 
one very great field, by creating new oppor- 
tunities for individual enterprise. The Sec- 
retary of the Interior has pointed out the way 
by which returning soldiers may be helped 
to find and take up land in the hitherto un- 

7 



86 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

developed regions of the country which the 
Federal government has already prepared or 
can readily prepare for cultivation, and also 
on many of the cut-over or neglected areas 
which lie within the limits of the older states, 
and I once more take the liberty of recom- 
mending very urgently that his plans shall 
receive the immediate and substantial sup- 
port of the Congress. 

INDUSTRY*S GREAT FUTURE 

Peculiar and very stimulating conditions 
await our commerce and industrial enterprise 
in the immediate future. Unusual oppor- 
tunities will soon present themselves to our 
merchants and producers in foreign markets, 
and large fields for profitable investment 
will be opened to our free capital. But it is 
not only of that I am thinking ; it is not chiefly 
of that I am thinking. Many great industries 
prostrated by the war wait to be rehabilitated 
in many parts of the world, where what will 
be lacking is not brains or willing hands or 
organizing capacity or experienced skill, but 
machinery and raw materials and capital. I 
believe that our business men, our merchants, 
our manufacturers, and our capitalists will 
have the vision to see that prosperity in one 
part of the world ministers to prosperity every- 
where; that there is in a very true sense a 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 87 

solidarity of interest throughout the world of 
enterprise, and that our dealings with the 
countries that have need of our products and 
our money will teach them to deem us more 
than ever friends whose necessities we seek 
in the right way to serve. 

TO FACILITATE WORLD TRADE 

Our new merchant-ships, which have in 
some quarters been feared as destructive rivals, 
may prpve helpful rivals rather, and common 
servants, very much needed and very welcome. 
Our great shipyards, new and old, will be so 
opened to the use of the world that they will 
prove immensely serviceable to every maritime 
people in restoring much more rapidly than 
would otherwise have been possible the ton- 
nage wantonly destroyed in the war. I have 
only to suggest that there are many points 
at which we can facilitate American enter- 
prise in foreign trade by opportune legislation 
and make it easy for American merchants 
to go where they will be welcomed as friends 
rather than as dreaded antagonists. America 
has a great and honorable service to perform 
in bringing the commercial and industrial un- 
dertakings of the world back to their old scope 
and swing again, and putting a solid structure 
of credit under them. All our legislation 
should be friendly to such plans and purposes. 



88 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

TAXATION LEGISLATION NEEDED 

And credit and enterprise alike will be 
quickened by timely and helpful legislation 
with regard to taxation. I hope that the Con- 
gress will find it possible to undertake an 
early reconsideration of Federal taxes in order 
to make our system of taxation more simple 
and easy of administration and the taxes them- 
selves as little burdensome as they can be made 
and yet suffice to support the government and 
meet all its obligations. The figures to which 
those obligations have risen are very great 
indeed, but they are not so great as to make it 
difficult for the nation to meet them, and 
meet them, perhaps, in a single generation 
by taxes which will neither crush nor discour- 
age. These are not so great as they seem, 
not so great as the immense sums we have had 
to borrow added to the immense sums we 
have had to raise by taxation, would seem to 
indicate; for a very large proportion of those 
sums were raised in order that they might be 
loaned to the governments with which we 
were associated in the war, and those loans 
will, of course, constitute assets, not liabilities, 
and will not have to be taken care of by our 
taxpayers. 

The main thing that we shall have to care 
for is that our taxation shall rest as lightly as 
possible on the productive resources of the 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 89 

country, that its rates shall be stable, and that 
it shall be constant in its revenue-yielding 
power. We have found the main sources from 
which it must be drawn. I take it for granted 
that its mainstays will henceforth be the in- 
come tax, the excess-profits tax, and the estate 
tax. All these can be so adjusted to yield 
constant and adequate returns and yet not 
constitute a too grievous burden on the tax- 
payer. A revision of the income tax has already 
been provided for by the Act of 1918, but I 
think you will find that further changes can 
be made to advantage, both in the rates of 
the tax and in the method of its collection. 
The excess-profits tax need not long be main- 
tained at the rates which were necessary while 
the enormous expenses of the war had to be 
borne, but it should be made the basis of a 
permanent system which will reach undue 
profits without discouraging the enterprise 
and activity of our business men. The tax 
on inheritances ought, no doubt, to be recon- 
sidered in its relation to the fiscal systems of 
the several states, but it certainly ought to 
remain a permanent part of the fiscal system 
of the Federal government also. 

MANY MINOR TAXES UNJUSTIFIABLE 

Many of the minor taxes provided for in 
the revenue legislation of 191 7 and 191 8, 



90 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

though no doubt made necessary by the press- 
ing necessities of the war-time, can hardly 
find sufficient justification under the easier 
circumstances of peace, and can now, happily, 
be got rid of. Among these, I hope you will 
agree, are the excises upon various manufact- 
ures and the taxes upon retail sales. They 
are unequal in the incidence on different in- 
dustries and on different individuals. Their 
collection is difficult and expensive. Those 
which are levied upon articles sold at retail 
are largely evaded by the readjustment of 
retail prices. On the other hand, I should 
assume that it is expedient to maintain a 
considerable range of indirect taxes, and the 
fact that alcoholic liquors will presently no 
longer afford a source of revenue by taxation 
makes it the more necessary that the field 
should be carefully restudied in order that 
equivalent sources of revenue may be found 
which it will be legitimate, and not burden- 
some, to draw upon. But you have at hand 
in the Treasury Department many experts 
who can advise you upon the matters much 
better than I can. I can only suggest the lines 
of a permanent and workable system, and the 
placing of the taxes where they will least 
hamper the life of the people. 

There is, fortunately, no occasion for under- 
taking in the immediate future any general 
revision of our systern of import duties, Nq 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 91 

serious danger of foreign competition now 
threatens American industries. Our country 
has emerged from the war less disturbed and 
less weakened than any of the European 
countries which are our competitors in manu- 
facture. Their industrial establishments have 
been subjected to greater strain than ours, 
their labor force to a more serious disorgan- 
ization, and this is clearly not the time to 
seek an organized advantage. The work of 
mere reconstruction will, I am afraid, tax the 
capacity and the resources of their people for 
years to come. So far from there being any 
danger or need of accentuated foreign com- 
petition, it is likely that the conditions of 
the next few years will greatly facilitate the 
marketing of American manufactures abroad. 
Least of all should we depart from the policy 
adopted in the Tariff Act of 19 13 of permitting 
the free entry into the United States of the 
raw materials needed to supplement and en- 
rich our own abundant supplies. 

SOME TARIFF REVISIONS NEEDED 

Nevertheless, there are parts of our tariff 
system which need prompt attention. The 
experiences of the war have made it plain that 
in some cases too great reliance on foreign 
supply is dangerous, and that in determining 
certain parts of our ta^ff policy domestic 



92 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

considerations must be borne in mind which 
are political as well as economic. Among the 
industries to which special consideration should 
be given is that of the manufacture of dye- 
stuffs and related chemicals. Our complete 
dependence upon German supplies before the 
war made the interruption of trade a cause of 
exceptional economic disturbance. The close 
relation between the manufacturer of dye- 
stuffs, on the one hand, and of explosives and 
poisonous gases, on the other, moreover, has 
given the industry an exceptional significance, 
and value. Although the United States will 
gladly and unhesitatingly join in the program 
of international disarmament, it will, never- 
theless, be a policy of obvious prudence to 
make certain of the successful maintenance 
of many strong and well-equipped chemical 
plants. German chemical industry, with which 
we will be brought into competition, was and 
may well be again a thoroughly knit monopoly 
capable of exercising a competition of a pecul- 
iarly insidious and dangerous kind. 

PROTECTION AGAINST COMPETITION 

The United States should, moreover, have 
the means of properly protecting itself when- 
ever our trade is discriminated against by 
foreign nations, in order that we may be as- 
sured of that equality of treatment which wq 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 93 

hope to accord and to promote the world over, 
Our tariff laws as they now stand provide no 
weapon of retaliation in case other govern- 
ments should enact legislation unequal in its 
bearing on our products as compared with 
the products of other countries. Though we 
are as far as possible from desiring to enter 
upon any course of retaliation, we must frankly 
face the fact that hostile legislation by other 
nations is not beyond the range of possibility, 
and that it may have to be met by counter 
legislation. This subject has fortunately been 
exhaustively investigated by the United States 
Tariff Commission. A recent report of that 
commission has shown very clearly that we 
lack and that we ought to have the instruments 
necessary for the assurance of equal and 
equitable treatment. The attention of the 
Congress has been called to this matter on 
past occasions, and the past measures which 
are now recommended by the Tariff Com- 
mission are substantially the same that have 
been suggested by previous administrations. 
I recommend that this phase of the tariff 
question receive the early attention of the 
Congress. 

SHOULD HASTEN WOMAN SUFFRAGE 

Will you not permit me, turning from these 
matters, to speak once more, and very ear- 



94 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

nestly, of the proposed amendment to the 
Constitution which would extend the suffrage 
to women, and which passed the House of 
Representatives at the last session of the 
Congress? It seems to me that every consid- 
eration of justice and of public advantage calls 
for the immediate adoption of that amend- 
ment and its submission forthwith to the 
legislatures of the several states. Through- 
out all the world this long-delayed extension 
of the suffrage is looked for; in the United 
States, longer, I believe, than anywhere else, 
the necessity for it, and the immense advantage 
of it to the national life, have been urged and 
debated by women and men who saw the need 
for it, and urged the policy of it when it re- 
quired steadfast courage to be so much before- 
hand with the common conviction; and I, for 
one, covet for our country the distinction of 
being among the first to act in a great reform. 

RETURN OP WIRES AND RAIL LINES 

The telegraph and telephone lines will, of 
course, be returned to their owners as soon 
as the retransfer can be effected without ad- 
ministrative confusion; so soon, that is, as the 
change can be made with least possible in- 
convenience to the public and to the owners 
themselves. The railroads will be handed 
over to their owners at the end of the calendar 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 95 

year; if I were in immediate contact with the 
administrative questions which must govern 
the retransfer of the telegraph and telephone 
lines, I could name the exact date for their 
return also. Until I am in direct contact with 
the practical questions involved I can only 
suggest that in the case of the telegraphs and 
telephones, as in the case of the railways, it 
is clearly desirable in the public interest that 
some legislation should be considered which 
may tend to make of these indispensable in- 
strumentalities of our modern life a uniform 
and co-ordinated system which will afford those 
who use them as complete and certain means 
of communication with all parts of the country 
as has so long been afforded by the postal 
system of the government, and at rates as 
uniform and intelligible. Expert advice is, 
of course, available in this very practical mat- 
ter, and the public interest is manifest. 
Neither the telegraph nor the telephone service 
of the country can be said to be in any sense 
a national system. There are many confusions 
and inconsistencies of rates. The scientific 
means by which communication by such in- 
strumentalities could be rendered more thor- 
ough and satisfactory has not been made full 
use of. An exhaustive study of the whole 
question of electrical communication and of 
the means by which the central authority of 
the nation can be used to unify and improve 



96 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

it, if undertaken by the appropriate com- 
mittees of the Congress, would certainly re- 
sult indirectly, even if not directly, in a great 
public benefit. 

REMOVE BAN ON WINES AND BEERS 

The demobilization of the military forces of 
the country has progressed to such a point 
that it seems to me entirely safe now to remove 
the ban upon the manufacture and sale of 
wines and beers, but I am advised that without 
further legislation I have not the legal au- 
thority to remove the present restrictions. I, 
therefore, recommend that the Act approved 
November 21, 191 8, entitled, *'An Act to en- 
able the Secretary of Agriculture to carry out, 
during the fiscal year ending June 30, 19 19, the 
purposes of the Act entitled,* An Act to pro- 
vide further for the national security and 
defense by stimulating agriculture and facili- 
tating the distribution of agricultural products,* 
and for other purposes," be amended or re- 
pealed in so far as it applies to wines and beers. 

I sincerely trust that I shall very soon be 
at my post in Washington again to report 
upon the matters which made my presence 
at the peace table apparently imperative, and 
to put myself at the service of the Congress in 
every matter of administration or counsel that 
may seem to demand executive action or advice. 



XII 

THE PRESIDENTIAL TASK 
(Paris, May 27, iqiq.) 

At the dinner given by the Pan-American 
Peace Delegation in honor of Dr. Epitacio 
Pessoa, President-elect of Brazil^ President 
Wilson spoke as follows: 

Mr. President and Gentlemen: The 
honor has been accorded me of making the 
first speech to-night, and I am very glad to 
avail myself of that privilege. I want to say 
that I feel very much at home in this company, 
though, after all, I suppose no one of us feels 
thoroughly at home except on the other side 
of the water. We all feel in a very real sense 
that we have a common home, because we 
live in the atmosphere of the same conceptions 
and, I think, with the same political ambitions 
and principles. 

I am particularly glad to have the oppor- 
tunity of paying my respects to Mr. Pessoa. 
It is very delightful, for one thing, if I may say 
so, to know that my Presidency is not ahead 
of me and that his Presidency is ahead of him. 
I wish him every happiness and every success 



98 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

with the greatest earnestness, and yet I can- 
not, if I may judge by my own experience, 
expect for him a very great exhilaration in the 
performance of the duties of his office, because, 
after all, to be the head of an American state 
is a task of unrelieved responsibility. Amer- 
ican constitutions, as a rule, put so many duties 
of the highest sort upon the President, and so 
much of the responsibility of the affairs of 
state is centered upon him, that his years of 
office are apt to be years a little weighted with 
anxiety, a little burdened with the sense of 
the obligation of speaking for his people, 
speaking what they really think and endeavor- 
ing to accomplish what they really desire. 

INTERPRETING THE NATIONAL SPIRIT 

I suppose no more delicate task is given any 
man than to interpret the feelings and the 
purposes of a great people. I know that, if 
I may speak for myself, the chief anxiety I 
have had has been to be the true interpreter 
of a national spirit, expressing no private and 
peculiar views, but trying to express the gen- 
eral spirit of a nation. And a nation looks to 
its President to do that; and the comradeship 
of an evening like this does not consist merely 
of the sense of neighborhood. We are neigh- 
bors. We have always been friends. But 
that is all old. Something new has happened. 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 99 

I am not sure that I can put it into words, 
but there has been added to the common prin- 
ciples which have united the Americans time 
out of mind a feeHng that the world at large 
has accepted those principles, that there has 
gone a thrill of hope and of expectation 
throughout the nations of the world which 
somehow seems to have its source and fountain 
in the things we always believed in. It is as if 
the pure waters of the fountains we had always 
drunk from had now been put to the lips of all 
peoples, and they had drunk and were refreshed. 
And it is a delightful thought to believe 
that these are fountains which sprang up out 
of the soil of the Americas. I am not, of course, 
suggesting or believing that political liberty 
had its birth in the American hemisphere, be- 
cause, of course, it had not; but the peculiar 
expression of it characteristic of the modern 
time, that broad republicanism, that genuine 
feeling and practice of democracy, that is 
becoming characteristic of the modern world, 
did have its origin in America; and the response 
of the peoples of the world to this new expres- 
sion is, we may perhaps pride ourselves, a 
response to an American suggestion. 

A PECULIAR SERVICE OWING 

If that is true, we owe the world a peculiar 
service. If we originated great practices, we 



loo THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

must ourselves be worthy of them. I re- 
member not long ago attending a very inter- 
esting meeting which was held in the interest 
of combining Christian missionary effort 
throughout the world. I mean eliminating the 
rivalry between churches and agreeing that 
Christian missionaries should not represent 
this, that, or the other church, but represent 
the general Christian impulse and principle 
of the world. I said I was thoroughly in sym- 
pathy with the principle, but that I hoped, if 
it was adopted, the inhabitants of the heathen 
countries would not come to look at us, be- 
cause we were not ourselves united, but 
divided; that while we were asking them to 
unite, we ourselves did not set the example. 

My moral from that recollection is this: 
We, among other friends of liberty, are ask- 
ing the world to unite in the interest of broth- 
erhood and mutual service and the genuine 
advancement of individual and corporate lib- 
erty throughout the world; therefore we must 
set the example. 

AN AMERICAN LEAGUE OF NATIONS 

I will recall here to some of you an effort 
that I myself made some years ago, soon after 
I assumed the Presidency of the United States, 
to do that very thing. I was urging the other 
states of America to unite with the United 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS loi 

States in doing something which very closely 
resembled the formation of the present League 
of Nations. I was ambitious to have the 
Americas do the thing first and set the example 
to the world of what we are now about to 
realize. I had a double object in it, not only 
my pride that the Americas should set the 
example and show the genuineness of their 
principles, but that the United States should 
have a new relation to the other Americas. 
The United States upon a famous occasion 
warned the governments of Europe that it 
would regard it as an unfriendly act if they 
tried to overturn free institutions in the 
Western Hemisphere and to substitute their 
ow^n systems of government, which at that 
time were inimical to those free institutions; 
but, while the United States thus undertook 
of its own motion to be the champion of 
America against such aggressions from Eu- 
rope, it did not give any ^conclusive assurance 
that it would never itself be the aggressor. 
What I wanted to do in the proposals to which 
I have just referred was to offer to the other 
American states our own bond that they were 
safe against us, and any illicit ambitions we 
might entertain, as well as safe, so far as the 
power of the United States could make them 
safe, against foreign nations. 

Of course, I am sorry that happy consum- 
mation did not come, but, after all, no doubt 



102 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

the impulse was contributed to by us which 
has now led to a sort of mutual pledge on the 
part of all the self-governing nations of the 
world that they will be friends to each other, 
not only, but that they will take pains to 
secure each other's safety and independence 
and territorial integrity. 

No greater thing has ever happened in the 
political world than that, and I am particu- 
larly gratified to-night to think of the hours 
I have had the pleasure of spending with Mr. 
Pessoa as a member, along with him, of the 
commission on the League of Nations, which 
prepared the covenant which was submitted 
to the conference. I have felt, as I looked 
down the table and caught his eye, that we 
had the same American mind in regard to the 
business, and when I made suggestions or 
used arguments that I felt were character- 
istically American, I would always catch sym- 
pathy in his eyes. When others perhaps did 
not catch the point at once, he always caught 
it, because, though we were not bred to the 
same language literally, we were bred to the 
same political language and the same political 
thought, and our ideas were the same. 

It is, therefore, with a real sense of com- 
munication and of fellowship and of some- 
thing more than neighborly familiarity that I 
find myself in this congenial company and 
that I take my part with you in paying my 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 103 

tribute and extending my warmest, best wishes 
to the great country of Brazil and to the 
gentleman who will worthily represent her in 
her presidential chair. 

I ask you to Join with me in drinking the 
health of the President-elect of Brazil. 



XIII 

A MEMORIAL DAY MESSAGE 
(Paris, May 2q, 1919.) 

President Wilson sent the following Memorial 
Day message to the American people: 

Memorial Day this year wears an added 
significance, and I wish, if only by a message, 
to take part with you in its observation and 
in expressing the sentiments which it invariably 
suggests. In observing the day we com- 
memorate not only the reunion of our own 
country, but also, now, the liberation of the 
world from one of the most serious dangers to 
which free government and the free life of 
men were exposed. 

We have buried the gallant and now im- 
mortal men who died in this great war of 
liberation with a new sense of consecration. 
Our thoughts and our purposes now are con- 
secrated to the maintenance of the liberty of 
the world and of the union of its people in a 
single comradeship of liberty and of right. It 
was for this that our men conscientiously 
offered their lives They came to the field of 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 105 

battle with the high spirit and pure heart of 
crusaders. 

We must never forget the duty that their 
sacrifice has laid upon us of fulfilling their 
hopes and their purposes to the utmost. This, 
it seems to me, is the impressive lesson and 
the inspiring mandate of the day. 



XIV 

THE MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS 
(Paris, May jo, 1919.) 

Following is the text of President Wilson's 
Memorial Day address at Suresnes Cemetery, 
near Paris, 

Mr. Ambassador, Ladies and Gentlemen, 
Fellow-countrymen : 

No one with a heart in his breast, no Amer- 
ican, no lover of humanity, can stand in the 
presence of these graves without the most pro- 
found emotion. These men who He here are 
men of a unique breed. Their Hke has not 
been seen since the far days of the Crusades. 
Never before have men crossed the seas to a 
foreign land to fight for a cause of humanity 
which they did not pretend was particularly 
their own, but knew was the cause of humanity 
and of mankind. 

And when they came they found com- 
rades for their courage and their devotion. 
They found armies of liberty already in the 
field — men who, though they had gone through 
three years of fiery trial, seemed only to be 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 107 

just discovering, not for a moment losing, 
the high temper of the great affair, men sea- 
soned in the bloody service of liberty. Join- 
ing hands with these, the men of America 
gave that greatest of all gifts, the gift of life 
and the gift of spirit. 

It will always be a treasured memory on 
the part of those who knew and loved these 
men that the testimony of everybody who 
saw them in the field of action was their un- 
flinching courage, their ardor to the point of 
audacity, their full consciousness of the high 
cause they had come to serve, and their con- 
stant vision of the issue. 

It is delightful to learn from those who saw 
these men fight, and saw them waiting in the 
trenches for the summons to the fight, that 
they had a touch of the high spirit of religion, 
that they knew they were exhibiting a spiritual 
as well as a physical might, and those of us 
who know and love America know that they 
were discovering to the whole world the true 
spirit and devotion of their motherland. 

It was America who came in the person of 
these men, and who will forever be grateful 
that she was so represented. 

FRENCH MOTHERS CARE FOR OUR DEAD 

And it is the more delightful to entertain 
these thoughts because we know that these 



io8 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

men, though buried in a foreign land, are not 
buried in an aHen soil. They are at home, 
sleeping with the spirits of those who thought 
the same thoughts and entertained the same 
aspirations. The noble women of Suresnes 
have given evidence of the loving sense with 
which they received these dead as their own, 
for they have cared for their graves, they 
have made it their interest, their loving in- 
terest, to see that there was no hour of 
neglect, and that constantly through all the 
months that have gone by the mothers at 
home should know that there were mothers 
here who remembered and honored their 
dead. 

You have just heard in the beautiful letter 
from M. Clemenceau what I believe to be 
the real message of France to us on a day like 
this — a message of genuine comradeship, a 
message of genuine sympathy, and I have no 
doubt that if our British comrades were here 
they would speak in the same spirit and in 
the same language. For the beauty of this 
war is that it has brought a new partnership, 
and a new comradeship, and a new under- 
standing into the field of the effort of the 
nation. 

But it would be no profit to us to eulogize 
these illustrious dead if we did not take to 
heart the lesson which they have taught us. 
They are dead ; they have done their utmost to 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 109 

show their devotion to a great cause, and they 
have left us to see to it that that cause shall 
not be betrayed, whether in war or peace. 

America's duty of consecration 

It is our privilege and our high duty to 
consecrate ourselves afresh on a day like this 
to the objects for which they fought. It is 
not necessary that I should rehearse to you 
what these objects were. 

These men did not come across the sea 
merely to defeat Germany and her associated 
powers in the war. They came to defeat for- 
ever the things for which the Central Powers 
stood, the sort of power they meant to assert 
in the world, the arrogant, selfish domination 
which they meant to establish; and they 
came, moreover, to see to it that there should 
never be a war like this again. It is for us, 
particularly for us who are civilized, to use 
our proper weapons of counsel and agreement, 
to see to it that there never is such a war again. 
The nation that should now fling out of this 
common concord of counsel would betray the 
human race. 

So it is our duty to take and maintain the 
safeguards which will see to it that the mothers 
of America, and the mothers of France and 
England and Italy and Belgium and all other 
suffering nations, should never be called upon 



no THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

for this sacrifice again. This can be done. It 
must be done. And it will be done. 



SEES LEAGUE AS LEGACY OF HONOR 

The things that these men left us, though 
they did not in their counsels perceive it, is 
the great instrument which we have just 
erected in the League of Nations. The 
League of Nations is the covenant of govern- 
ment that these men shall not have died in 
vain. 

I like to think that the dust of those sons 
of America who were privileged to be buried 
in their mother-country will mingle with the 
dust of the men who fought for the preserva- 
tion of the Union, and that as those men gave 
their lives in order that America might be 
united, these men have given their lives in 
order that the world might be united. 

Those men gave their lives in order to secure 
the freedom of a nation. These men have given 
theirs in order to secure the freedom of man- 
kind; and I look forward to an age when it 
will be just as impossible to regret the results 
of their labor as it is now impossible to regret 
the result of the labor of those men who fought 
for the union of the states. 

I look for the time when every man who now 
puts his counsel against the united service of 
mankind under the League of Nations will be 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS in 

just as ashamed of it as if he now regretted 
the union of the states. 



OLD ORDER STILL SEEKS TO PREVAIL 

You are aware, as I am aware, that the airs 
of an older day are beginning to stir again, 
that the standards of an old order are trying 
to assert themselves again. There is here and 
there an attempt to insert into the counsel of 
statesmen the old reckoning of selfishness and 
bargaining and national advantage which were 
the roots of this war, and any man who coun- 
sels these things advocates a renewal of the 
sacrifice which these men have made, for if 
this is not the final battle for right, there will 
be another that will be final. 

Let these gentlemen who suppose that it is 
possible for them to accomplish this return 
to an order of which we are ashamed, and 
that we are ready to forget, realise they can- 
not accomplish it. The peoples of the world 
are awake and the peoples of the world are in 
the saddle. Private counsels of statesmen can- 
not now and cannot hereafter determine the 
destinies of nations. If we are not the servants 
of the opinion of mankind, we are of all men 
the littlest, the most contemptible, the least 
gifted with vision. If we do not know courage 
we cannot accomplish our purpose; and this 
age is an age which looks forward, not back- 



112 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

ward; which rejects the standard of national 
selfishness that once governed the counsels of 
nations, and demands that they shall give way 
to a new order of things in which the only 
question will be: "Is it right?" *'Is it just?" 
**Is it in the interest of mankind?" 

This is a challenge that no previous genera- 
tion ever dared to give ear to. So many 
things have happened, and they have hap- 
pened so fast in the last four years, that I do 
not think many of us realize what it is that has 
happened. Think how impossible it would 
have been to get a body of responsible states- 
men seriously to entertain the idea of the 
organization of a League of Nations four years 
ago ! And think of the change that has taken 
place ! 

I was told before I came to France that there 
would be confusion of counsels about this 
thing, and I found unity of counsel. I was 
told that there would be opposition, and I 
found union of action. I found the statesmen 
with whom I was about to deal united in the 
idea that we must have a League of Nations; 
that we could not merely make a peace settle- 
ment and then leave it to make itself effectual, 
but that we must conceive some common 
organization by which we should give our com- 
mon faith that this peace would be maintained 
and the conclusions at which we had arrived 
should be made as secure as the united coun- 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 113 

sels of all the great nations that fought against 
Germany could make them. We have lis- 
tened to the challenge, and that is the proof 
that there shall never be a war like this 
again. 

Ladies and Gentlemen: We all believe, I 
hope, that the spirits of these men are not 
buried with their bones. Their spirits live. I 
hope — I believe — that their spirits are present 
with us at this hour. I hope that I feel the 
compulsion of their presence. I hope that I 
realize the significance of their presence. 
Think, soldiers, of those comrades of yours 
who are gone. If they were here what would 
they say? They would not remember what 
you are talking about to-day. 

They would remember America, which they 
left with their high hope and purpose. They 
would remember the terrible field of battle. 
They would remember what they constantly 
recalled in times of danger, what they had come 
for, and how worth while it was to give their 
lives for it. 

THE UNSPOKEN MANDATE OF THE DEAD 

And they would say: ** Forget all the little 
circumstances of the day. Be ashamed of the 
jealousies that divide you. We command you 
in the name of those who, like ourselves, have 
died to bring the counsel of men together; and 



114 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

we remind you what America said she was born 
for. She was born, she said, to show mankind 
the way to Hberty. She was born to make 
this great gift a common gift. She was born 
to show men the way of experience by which 
they might reaHze this gift and maintain it; 
and we adjure you, in the name of all the great 
traditions of America, to make yourselves 
soldiers now, once for all, in this common 
cause, where we need wear no uniform except 
the uniform of the heart, clothing ourselves 
with the principles of right and saying to men 
everywhere, *You are our brothers and we in- 
vite you into the comradeship of liberty and 
of peace."* 

Let us go away hearing these unspoken 
mandates of our dead comrades. 

If I may speak a personal word, I beg you 
to realize the compulsion that I myself feel 
that I am under. By the Constitution of our 
great country, I was the Commander-in-chief 
of these men. I advised the Congress to de- 
clare that a state of war existed. I sent these 
lads over here to die. Shall I — can I — ever 
speak a word of counsel which is inconsistent 
with the assurances I gave them when they 
came over? It is inconceivable. 

There is something better, if possible, that 
a man can give than his life, and that is his 
living spirit to a service that is not easy, to 
resist counsels that are hard to resist, to stand 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 115 

against purposes that are difficult to stand 
against, and to say, "Here stand I, conse- 
crated in the spirit of the men who were once 
my comrades, and who are now gone, and who 
left me under eternal bonds of fidelity." 



XV 

A LEAGUE OF RIGHT 
(Brussels, June ig, 1919.) 

Addressing the Chamber oj Deputies, the 
President said: 

Your Majesty and Gentlemen: It is 
with such profound emotion that I express 
my deepest appreciation of the generous wel- 
come you have given me that I am not at all 
sure that I can find the words to say what it 
is in my heart to say. 

Mr. Hymans has repeated to you some of the 
things which America tried to do to show her 
profound friendship and sympathy with Bel- 
gium, but Mr. Hymans was not able to testify, 
as I am, to the heart of America that was 
back of her efforts. For America did not do 
these things merely because she conceived 
it her duty to do them, but because she re- 
joiced in this way to show her real hu- 
manity and her real knowledge of the needs 
of an old and faithful friend. And these 
things, I hope, will be the dearer in your 
memory because of the spirit which was be- 
hind them. 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 117 

They were small in themselves. We often 
had the feeling that we were not doing as 
much as we could do. We knew all the time 
we were not doing as much as we wanted to 
do. And it is this spirit, and not what was 
done, which deserves, I hope, to be remem- 
bered. 



DUTY WELL DONE 

It is very delightful to find myself at last 
in Belgium. I have come at the first moment 
that I was relieved from imperative duty, 
I could not come for my own pleasure, and in 
neglect of duty, to a country where I knew 
that I should meet men who had done their 
duty. Where I knew I should meet a sovereign 
who had constantly identified himself with the 
interests and the life of his people at every 
sacrifice to himself. Where I should be greeted 
by a burgomaster who never allowed the enemy 
to thrust him aside, and always asserted the 
majority and authority of the municipality 
which he represented. Where I should have 
the privilege of meeting a cardinal who was 
the true shepherd of his flock, the majesty of 
whose spiritual authority awed even the un- 
scrupulous enemy himself, who knew that he 
did not dare lay hand upon this servant of 
God, and where I should have the privilege 
of grasping the hand of a general who never 



ii8 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

surrendered, and on every hand should meet 
men who had known their duty and had 
done it. 

I could not come to Belgium until I felt 
that I was released from my duty. I sought 
in this way to honor you by recognizing the 
spirit which I knew I should meet with here. 
When I realize that at my back are the fight- 
ing standards of Belgium it pleases me to think 
that I am in the presence of those who knew 
how to shed their blood as well as do their 
duty for their country. They need no en- 
comium from me. 

I would rather turn for a moment with you 
to the significance of the place which Belgium 
bears in this contest, which, thank God, is 
ended. I came here because I wished to as- 
sociate myself in counsel with the men who I 
knew had felt so deeply the pulse of this ter- 
rible struggle, and I wanted to come also be- 
cause I realized, I believe, that Belgium and 
her part in the war are in one sense the key 
of the whole struggle, because the violation 
of Belgium was the call to duty which aroused 
the nations. 

AWAKENED THE WORLD 

The enemy committed many outrages in 
this war, gentlemen, but the initial outrage 
was the fundamental outrage of all. They, 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 119 

with that insolent indifference, violated the 
sacredness of treaties. They showed that they 
did not care for the honor of any pledge. They 
showed that they did not care for the indepen- 
dence of any nation, whether it had raised its 
hand against them or not; that they were 
ruthless in their determination to have their 
whim at their pleasure. Therefore, it was the 
violation of Belgium that awakened the world 
to the realization of the character of the 
struggle. 

A very interesting thing came out of that 
struggle which seems almost like an illogical 
consequence. One of the first things that the 
representatives of Belgium said to me after 
the war began was that they did not want 
their neutrality guaranteed. They did not 
want any neutrality. They wanted equality, 
not because, as I understood them, their neu- 
trality was insecure, but because their neu- 
trality put them upon a different basis of 
action from other peoples. In their natural 
and proper pride they desired to occupy a 
place that was not exceptional, but in the ranks 
of free peoples under all governments. 

I honored this instinct in them, and it was 
for that reason that the first time I had oc- 
casion to speak of what the war might ac- 
complish for Belgium, I spoke of her winning 
a place of equality among the nations. So 
Belgium has, so to say, once more come into 



I20 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

her own through this deep valley of suffering 
through which she has gone. 



A LEAGUE OF RIGHTS 

Not only that, but her cause has Jinked the 
governments of the civilzied world together. 
They have realized their common duty. They 
have drawn together, as if instinctively, into 
a league of rights. They have put the whole 
power of organized manhood behind this con- 
ception of justice which is common to man- 
kind. 

That is the significance, gentlemen, of the 
League of Nations. The League of Nations 
was an inevitable consequence of this war. It 
was a league of rights, and no thoughtful 
statesman who let his thought run into the 
future could wish for a moment to slacken 
those bonds. His first thought would be to 
strengthen them and to perpetuate this com- 
bination of the great governments of the world 
for the maintenance of justice. 

The League of Nations is the child of this 
great war, for it is the expression of those 
permanent resolutions which grew out of the 
temporary necessities of this great struggle; 
and any nation which declines to adhere to 
this covenant deliberately turns away from the 
most telling appeal that has ever been made to 
its conscience and to its manhood. 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 121 

The nation that wishes to use the League of 
Nations for its convenience, and not for the 
service of the rest of the world, deHberately 
chooses to turn back to those bad days of 
selfish contest when every nation thought 
first and always of itself, and not of its neigh- 
bors; thought of its rights and forgot its du- 
ties; thought of its power and overlooked its 
responsibility. 

THE OLD ORDER GONE 

Those bad days, I hope, are gone, and the 
great moral power, backed, if need be, by the 
great physical power of the civilized nations 
of the world, will now stand firm for the main- 
tenance of the fine partnership which we have 
thus inaugurated. 

It cannot be otherwise. Perhaps the con- 
science of some chancelleries was asleep, and 
the outrage of Germany awakened it. You 
cannot see one great nation violate every prin- 
ciple of right without beginning to know what 
the principles of right are and to love them, 
to despise those who violate them, and to form 
the firm resolve that such a violation shall now 
be punished, and in the future be prevented. 

These are the feelings with which I have 
come to Belgium, and it has been my thought 
to propose to the Congress of the United States, 
as a recognition and as a welcome of Belgium 



122 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

into her new status of complete independence, 
to raise the mission of the United States of 
America to Belgium to the rank of an embassy, 
and send an ambassador. This is the rank 
which Belgium enjoys in our esteem; why 
should she not enjoy it in form and in fact? 

So, gentlemen, we turn to the future. Mr. 
Hymans has spoken in true terms of the 
necessities that lie ahead of Belgium and of 
many another nation that has come through 
this great war with suffering and with loss. 
We have shown Belgium, in the forms which 
he has been generous enough to recite, our 
friendship in the past. It is now our duty to 
organize our friendship along new lines. 

The Belgian people and the Belgian leaders 
need only the tools to restore their life. Their 
thoughts are not crushed; their purposes are 
not obscured; their plans are complete and 
their knowledge of what is involved in in- 
dustrial revival is complete. 

What their friends must do is to see to it 
that Belgium gets the necessary priority with 
regard to obtaining raw materials, the nec- 
essary priority in obtaining the means to re- 
store the machinery by which she can use these 
raw materials, and the credit by which she 
can bridge over the years which it will be 
necessary for her to wait to begin again. 

These are not so much tasks for governments 
^s they are tasks for thoughtful bvisiiaes^ nieu 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 123 

and financiers and those who are producers in 
other countries. It is a question of shipping 
also. But the shipping of the world will be 
relieved of its burdens of troops in a compara- 
tively near future, and there will be new bot- 
toms in which to carry the cargoes, and the 
cargoes ought readily to impel the master of 
the ship to steer for Belgian ports. 

I believe, after having consulted many times 
with my very competent advisers in the mat- 
ter, that an organized method of accomplishing 
these things can be found. It is a matter of 
almost daily discussion in Paris, and I believe 
that as we discuss from day to day we come 
nearer and nearer to a workable solution and 
a probable plan. I hope not only, but I be- 
lieve, that such a plan will be found, and you 
may be sure that America will be pleased, I 
will not say more than any other friend of 
Belgium, but as much as any other friend of 
Belgium, if these plans are perfected and car- 
ried out. 

FRIENDSHIP IS PRACTICAL 

Friendship, gentlemen, is a very practical 
matter. One thing that I think I have grown 
weary of is sentiment that doeis not express 
itself in action. How real the world has been 
made by this war! How actual all its facts 
seem! How terrible the circumstances of it§ 



124 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

life! And if we be friends we must think of 
each other not only, but we must act for each 
other; we must not only have a sentimental 
regard, but we must put that regard into 
actual deeds. 

There is an old proverb which has no lit- 
erary beauty, but it has a great deal of sig- 
nificance, "The proof of the pudding is the 
eating thereof.'* It is by that maxim that 
all friendships are to be judged. It is when a 
friendship is put to the proof that its quality 
is found. So our business now is not to talk, 
but to act. It is not so much to debate as to 
resolve. It is not so much to hesitate upon 
the plan as to perfect the details of the plan, 
and at every turn to be sure that we think 
not only of ourselves, but of humanity. For, 
gentlemen, the realities of this world are not 
discussed around dinner-tables. 

Do you realize for how small a percentage 
of mankind it is possible to get anything for 
to-morrow if you do not work to-day; how 
small a percentage of mankind can slacken 
their physical and thoughtful effort for a mo- 
ment and not find the means of subsistence 
fail them? 

Some men can take holidays, some men 
can relieve themselves from the burden of 
work. But most men cannot, most women 
cannot, and the children wait upon the men 
and women who work — work every day, work 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 125 

from the dawn until the evening. These are 
the people we must think about. They con- 
stitute the rank and file of mankind. They 
are the constituents of statesmen, and states- 
men must see to it that pohcies are not now 
run along the lines of national pride, but along 
the lines of humanity, along the lines of ser- 
vice, along those lines which we have been 
taught are the real lines by the deep suffering 
of this war. 

This is the healing peace of which Mr. 
Hymans eloquently spoke. You help the na- 
tions by serving the nations, and you serve 
them by thinking of mankind. 

In his address during the luncheon at the 
American Legation, President Wilson said: 

Your Majesties, Ladies and Gentlemen: 
I want to express my pleasure not only to 
be in Belgium, but to be personally associated 
with the King and the Queen. We have found 
them what all the world has told us they were 
— ^perfectly genuine, perfectly delightful, and 
perfectly devoted to the interests of the people, 
and not only so, but, what is very rare just 
now, very just in their judgments of the 
events of the past and of the events that are 
now taking place. 

I could not help expressing the opinion which 
I did yesterday that this must arise from the 



126 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

fact that they had intimately associated them- 
selves in life with their people. If you live 
with the talkers you get an impression; if you 
live with the doers you get another impres- 
sion, you come into contact with the realities, 
and only realities make you wise and just. 

I want, within this very brief space in which 
I am speaking from my heart, to propose the 
health and long life of His Majesty the King, 
and Her Majesty the Queen. 



XVI 

NATIONS IN PARTNERSHIP 
(Paris, June 26, iqiq.) 

At a dinner given by President PoincarS in 
honor of President Wilson and the delegates to 
the Peace Conference, Mr. Wilson spoke as 
follows: 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 
I thank you most sincerely for the words 
that you have uttered. I cannot pretend, sir, 
that the prospect of going home is not very 
delightful to me, but I can say with the greatest 
sincerity that the prospect of leaving France 
is very painful to me. 

I have received a peculiarly generous wel- 
come here, and it has been pleasing for me to 
feel that that welcome was intended not so 
much for myself as for the people whom I 
represent. And the people of France know 
how to give a welcome that makes a man's 
heart glad. They have a spontaneity about 
them, a simplicity of friendship, which is 
altogether delightful, 



128 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

THE ROOTS OF FRIENDSHIP 

I feel that my stay here, sir, has enlight- 
ened both my heart and my mind. It has en- 
abled me personally to see the evidence of 
the suffering and the sacrifices of France. It 
has enabled me to come into personal touch 
with the leaders of the French people, and 
through the medium of intercourse with them 
to understand better, I hope, than I under- 
stood before, the motives, the ambitions, and 
the principles which actuate this great nation. 
It has, therefore, been to me a lesson in the 
roots of friendship, in those things which make 
the intercourse of nations profitable and ser- 
viceable for all the rest of mankind. 

Sometimes the work of the conference has 
seemed to go very slowly indeed. Sometimes 
it has seemed as if there were unnecessary ob- 
stacles to agreement, but as the weeks have 
lengthened I have seemed to see the profit 
that came out of that. Quick conclusions 
would not have produced that intimate knowl- 
edge of each other's minds which I think has 
come out of these daily conferences. 

We have been constantly in the presence 
of each other's minds and motives and char- 
acters, and the comradeships which are based 
upon that sort of knowledge are sure to be 
very much more intelligent not only, but to 
breed a much more intimate sympathy and 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 129 

comprehension than could otherwise be 
created. 



PEOPLES MORE CLOSELY KNIT 

These six months have been six months 
which have woven new fibers of connection 
between the hearts of our people. And some- 
thing more than friendship and intimate sym- 
pathy has come out of this intercourse. 

Friendship is a very good thing. Intimacy 
is a very enlightening thing. But friendship 
may end with sentiment. A new thing that 
has happened is that we have translated our 
common principles and our common pur- 
poses into a common plan. When we part 
we are not going to part with a finished 
work, but with a work one portion of which 
is finished and the other portion of which is 
only begun. 

We have finished the formulation of the 
peace, but we have begun a plan of co- 
operation which I believe will broaden and 
strengthen as the years go by, so that this 
grip of the hand that we have taken now will 
need to be relaxed. We have been and shall 
continue to be comrades. We shall continue 
to be co-workers in tasks which, because they 
are comimon, will weave out of our sentiments 
a common conception of duty and a common 
conception of the rights of m-en of every race 



I30 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

and of every clime. If it be true that that has 
been accomplished, it is a very great thing. 



PARTNERSHIP OF NATIONS 

As I go away from these scenes I think I 
shall realize that I have been present at one 
of the most vital things that have happened 
in the history of nations. Nations have 
formed contracts with each other before, but 
they never have formed partnerships; they 
have associated themselves temporarily, but 
they have never before associated themselves 
permanently. 

The wrong that was done in the waging of 
this war was a great wrong, but it wakened 
the world to a great moral necessity of seeing 
that it was necessary that men should band 
themselves together in order that such a 
wrong should never be perpetrated again. 

Merely to beat a nation that was wrong 
once is not enough. There must follow the 
warning to all other nations that would do 
like things that they in turn will be van- 
quished and shamed if they attempt a dis- 
honorable purpose. 

You can see, therefore, sir, with what deep 
feelings those of us who must now for a little 
while turn away from France shall leave your 
shores, and though the ocean is broad, it will 
seem very narrow in the future. It will be 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 131 

easier to understand each other than it ever 
was before, and with the confident intercourse 
of co-operation the understanding will be 
strengthened into action, and action will itself 
educate alike our purpose and our thought. 

So, sir, in saying good-by to France, I am 
only saying a sort of physical good-by, not 
a spiritual good-by. I shall retain in my 
heart always the warm feelings which the 
generous treatment of this great people has 
generated in my heart. And I wish, in my 
turn, sir, to propose, as you have proposed, 
the continued and increasing friendship of the 
two nations, the safety and prosperity of 
France, and closer and closer communion of 
free peoples, and the strengthening of every 
influence which instructs the mind and the 
purpose of humanity. 



XVII 

THE TREATY A NEW MAGNA CHARTA 
(Washington, June 28, 1919.) 

The following message from President Wilson 
to the American people was given out by Secretary 
Tumulty: 

My Fellow-countrymen: The treaty of 
peace has been signed. If it is ratified and 
acted upon in full and sincere execution of its 
terms, it will furnish the charter for a new 
order of affairs in the world. It is a severe 
treaty in the duties and penalties it imposes 
upon Germany, but it is severe only because 
great wrongs done by Germany are to be 
righted and repaired; it imposes nothing that 
Germany cannot do, and she can regain her 
rightful standing in the world by the prompt 
and honorable fulfilment of its terms. 

MUCH MORE THAN A TREATY 

And it is much more than a treaty of peace 
with Germany. It liberates great peoples who 
have never before been able to find the way 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 133 

to liberty. It ends, once for all, an old and in- 
tolerable order under which small groups of 
selfish men could use the peoples of great em- 
pires to serve their ambition for power and 
dominion. It associates the free governments 
of the world in a permanent league in which 
they are pledged to use their united power to 
maintain peace by maintaining right and jus- 
tice. It makes international law a reality 
supported by imperative sanctions. It does 
away with the right of conquest and rejects 
the policy of annexation and substitutes a 
new order under which backward nations — 
populations which have not yet come to polit- 
ical consciousness, and peoples who are ready 
for independence, but not yet quite prepared 
to dispense with protection and guidance — 
shall no more be subjected to the domination 
and exploitation of a stronger nation, but shall 
be put under the friendly direction and af- 
forded the helpful assistance of governments 
which undertake to be responsible to the world 
for the execution of their task by accepting the 
direction of the League of Nations It recog- 
nizes the inalienable rights of nationality, the 
rights of minorities, and the sanctity of religious 
belief and practice. It lays the basis for con- 
ventions which shall free the commercial inter- 
course of the world from unjust and vexatious 
restrictions, and for every sort of international 

co-operation that will serve to cleanse the life 
10 



134 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

of the world and facilitate its common action 
in beneficent service of every kind. It fur- 
nishes guarantees such as were never given nor 
even contemplated for the fair treatment of 
all who labor at the daily tasks of the world. 
It is for this reason that I have spoken of 
it as a great charter for a new order of affairs. 
There is ground here for deep satisfaction, 
universal reassurance, and confident hope. 



XVIII 

FAREWELL TO FRANCE 
(Paris, June 28^ 1919.) 

President Wilson, on the eve of his departure 
for France J made the following statement: 

As I look back over the eventful months I 
have spent in France, my memory is not of 
conferences and hard work alone, but also of 
innumerable acts of generosity and friendship 
which have made me feel how genuine the 
sentiments of France are toward the people 
of America, and how fortunate I have been 
to be the representative of our people in the 
midst of a nation which knows how to show 
us kindness with so much charm and so much 
open manifestation of what is in its heart. 

Deeply happy as I am at the prospects of 
joining my own countrymen again, I leave 
France with genuine regret, my deep sympathy 
for her people and belief in her future con- 
firmed, my thought enlarged by the privilege 
of association with her public men, conscious 
of more than one affectionate friendship formed 
and profoundly grateful for unstinted hospi- 



136 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

tality and for countless kindnesses which have 
made me feel welcome and at home. 

I take the liberty of bidding France God- 
speed as well as good-by and of expressing 
once more my abiding interest and entire con- 
fidence in her future. 



XIX 

A PARTING WORD TO GREAT BRITAIN 
(London, June 2g, 1919.) 

A peace message from President Wilson to 
' ' The Daily Mail ''and'' The Weekly Dispatch,' ' 
says: 

Many things crowd intot he mind to be 
said about the peace treaty, but the thought 
that stands out in front of all others is that 
by the terms of the treaty the greatest possible 
measure of compensation has been provided 
for people whose homes and lives were wrecked 
by the storm of war, and security has been 
given them that the storm shall not arise 
again. In so far as we came together to insure 
these things, the work of the conference is 
finished, but in a larger sense its work begins 
to-day. In answer to an unmistakable ap- 
peal, the League of Nations has been consti- 
tuted and a covenant has been drawn which 
shows the way to international understanding 
and peace. 



138 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

We stand at the crossroads, however, and 
the way is only pointed out. Those who saw 
through the travail of war the vision of a 
world made secure for mankind must now con- 
secrate their lives to its realization. 



XX 

THE LAWS OF FREEDOM 
(At Sea, July 4, 1919.) 

In his Fourth of July address to the soldiers 
and sailors aboard the ''George Washington j" 
the President spoke as follows: 

Fellow-countrymen: It is very delightful 
to find myself here and in this company. I 
know a great many of you have been home- 
sick on the other side of the water, but I do 
not believe a man among you has been as 
homesick as I have. 

It is with profound delight that I find myself 
bound westward again for the country we all 
love and are trying to serve, and when I was 
asked to make a speech and sat down and tried 
to think out what I should say, I found that 
the suggestions of this Fourth of July crowded 
into my mind in such a way that they could 
not be set in order; and I doubt if I can find 
expression to them, because this Fourth of 
July has a significance that no preceding 
Fourth of July ever had in it, not even the 
first. 



140 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

WE HAVE KEPT THE VISION 

I think that we can look back upon the 
history of the years that separated us from the 
first Fourth of July with very great satisfac- 
tion, because we have kept the vision in 
America, we have kept the promise to our- 
selves that we would maintain a regime of 
liberty and of constitutional government. 

We have made errors of judgment, we have 
committed errors of action, but we have always 
tried to correct the errors when we have made 
them. We have always tried to get straight 
in the road again for that goal for which we 
set out in those famous days when America 
was made as a government. So there has 
always been abundant justification for what 
was not self-glorification, but self-gratulation, 
in our Fourth of July celebration. 

We have successfully maintained the lib- 
erties of a great nation. The past is secure and 
the past is glorious; and in the present the 
Fourth of July has taken on a new significance. 

We told our fellow-men throughout the 
world when we set up the free state of America 
that we wanted to serve Hberty everywhere 
and be the friends of men in every part of the 
world who wanted to throw off the unjust 
shackles of arbitrary government. Now we 
have kept our pledge to humanity as well as 
our pledge to ourselves, for we have thrown 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 141 

everything that we possessed — all the gifts 
that nature had showered upon us and our 
own lives — into the scales to show that we 
meant to be the servants of humanity and of 
free men everywhere. 

THE FULL MEANING OF THE WAR 

America did not at first see the full meaning 
of the war that has just ended. At first it 
looked like a natural raking out of the pent-up 
jealousies and rivalries of the complicated 
politics of Europe. Nobody who really knew 
anything about history supposed that Ger- 
many could build up a great military machine 
like she did and not refrain from using it. 

They were constantly talking about it as a 
guarantee of peace, but every man in his 
senses knew that it was a threat of war, and 
the threat was finally fulfilled and the war 
began. We, at the distance of America, 
looked on at first without a full comprehension 
of what the plot was getting into, and then 
at last we realized that there was here noth- 
ing less than a threat against the freedom of 
free men everywhere. 

Then America went in, and if it had not 
been for America the war would not have been 
won. My heart swells with a pride that I 
cannot express when I think of the men who 
crossed the seas from America to fight on those 



142 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

battle-fields. I was proud of them when I 
could not see them, and now that I have 
mixed with them and seen them I am prouder 
of them still. For they are men to the core, 
and I am glad to have had Europe see this 
specimen of our manhood. 

I am proud to know how the men who per- 
formed the least conspicuous services and the 
humblest services performed them just as 
well as the men who performed the conspicu- 
ous services and the most complicated and 
difficult. I will not say that the men were 
worthy of their officers. I will say that the 
officers were worthy of their men. They 
sprang out of the ranks, they were like the 
ranks, and all — rank and file — were specimens 
of America. 

THE COMPULSION OF THE FUTURE 

And you know what has happened. Having 
sampled America that way, Europe believes 
in and trusts America. Is not that your own 
personal experience and observation? In all 
the councils at Paris, whenever they wanted 
to send soldiers anywhere and not have the 
people jealous of their presence or fear the 
consequences of their presence, they suggested 
that we should send Americans there; because 
they knew that everywhere in Europe we were 
believed to be the friends of the countries 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 143 

where we sent garrisons, and where we sent 
forces of supervision we were welcome. 

Am I not, therefore, justified in saying that 
we have fulfilled our pledge to humanity ? We 
have proved that we were the champions of 
liberty throughout the world, that we did not 
wish to keep it as a selfish and private pos- 
session of our own, but wanted to share it 
with men everywhere and of every kind. 

When you look forward to the future do 
you not see what a compulsion that puts upon 
us? You cannot earn a reputation like that 
and then not live up to it. You cannot reach 
a standard like that and then let it down by 
never so little. Every man of us has to live 
up to it. The welcome that was given to our 
arms and the cheers that received us are the 
compulsion that is now put upon us to con- 
tinue to be worthy of that welcome and of 
those cheers. 

We must continue to put America at the 
service of mankind. Not for any profit we 
shall get out of it, not for any private benefit 
we shall reap from it, but because we believe 
in the right and mean to serve it wherever 
we have a chance to serve it. 



NEW FREEDOM OUT OP WAR 

I was thinking to-day that new freedom has 
come to the peoples of the world out of this 



144 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

war. It has no date. It has no Fourth of 
July. There has nowhere been written a 
Declaration of Independence. The only date 
I can think of for it is the eleventh of last 
November, when the Central Powers admitted 
they were beaten and accepted an armistice. 
From that time they knew they had to submit 
to the terms of liberty, and perhaps some of 
these days we shall date the freedom of the 
peoples from the eleventh of November, 191 8. 

And yet if that be not the date of it, it in- 
terests my thought to think that, as it had no 
date for beginning, we should see to it that it 
had no date for ending; that as it began with- 
out term, it should end without term, and that 
in every council we enter into, in every force 
we contribute to, we shall make it a condition 
that the liberty of men throughout the world 
shall be served and that America shall con- 
tinue to redeem her pledge to humanity and 
to mankind. 

Why, America is made up of mankind. We 
do not come from any common stock. We 
do not come from any single nation. The 
characteristic of America is that it is made up 
of the best contributed out of all nations. 
Sometimes when I am in the presence of an 
American citizen who was an immigrant to 
America, I think that he has a certain ad- 
vantage over me. I did not choose to be an 
American, but he did. I was born to it. I hope 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 145 

if I had not been, I would have had sense 
enough to choose it. But the men who came 
afterward deliberately chose to be Americans. 
They came out of other countries and said, 
"We cast in our lot with you, we believe in 
you, and will live with you." A country made 
up like that ought to understand other na- 
tions. It ought to know how to fraternize 
with and assist them. It is already the friend 
of mankind, because it is made up of all 
people, and it ought to redeem its lineage. It 
ought to show that it is playing for no private 
hand. It ought to show that it is trying to 
serve all the stocks of mankind from which it 
itself is bred. And more than that, my fellow- 
countrymen, we ought to continue to prove 
that we know what freedom is. 

MUST REDEEM PRINCIPLES 

Freedom is not a mere sentiment. We all 
feel the weakness of mere sentiment. If a 
man professes to be fine, we always wait for 
him to show it. We do not take his word for 
it. If he professes fine motives, we expect 
him thereafter to show that he is acting upon 
fine motives. And the kind of freedom that 
America has always represented is a freedom 
expressing itself in fact. It is not the profes- 
sion of principles, merely, but the redemption 
of those principles, making good on those 



146 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

principles, and knowing how to make good on 
those principles. 

When I have thought of liberty, I have some- 
times thought how we deceived ourselves in 
the way we talked about it. Some people 
talk as if liberty meant the right to do anything 
you please. Well, in some sense you have that 
right. You have the right to jump overboard, 
but if you do, this is what will happen: "You 
fool, don't you know the consequences? Didn't 
you know that water will drown you?'* You can 
jump off the top of the mast, but when you 
get down, your liberty will be lost, because if 
it was not an accident you made a fool of 
yourself. 

The sailor, when he is sailing a ship, talks 
about her running free in the wind. Does he 
mean that she is resisting the wind? Throw 
her up into the wind and see the canvas shake, 
see her stand still, '* caught in irons," as the 
sailor says. But let her fall off; she is free. 
Free, why? Because she is obeying the laws 
of nature, and she is a slave until she does. 
And no man is free who does not obey the laws 
of freedom. 

The laws of freedom are these: Accommo- 
date your interests to other people's interests; 
that you shall not insist in standing in the 
light of other people, but that you shall make 
a member of a team of yourself and nothing 
more or less, and that the interests of the 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 147 

team shall take precedence in everything that 
you do to your interest as an individual. 



THE TRUE FREEDOM 

That is freedom, and men who live under 
autocratic governments are not free, because 
the autocrat arranges the government to suit 
himself. The minute he arranges it to suit 
his subjects then his subjects are free. 

But if I disobey the laws of freedom, if I 
infringe on the rights of others, then I presently 
find myself deprived of my freedom. I am 
clapped in jail, it may be, and if the jailer 
is a philosopher he will say: *'You brought it 
upon yourself, my dear fellow. You were 
free to do right, but you were not free to do 
wrong. Now, what I blame you for is not so 
much for your malice as for your ignorance.'* 

One reason why America has been free, I 
take leave to say, is that America has been 
intelligent enough to be free. It takes a lot 
of intelligence to be free. Stupid people do 
not know how, and we all go to the school of 
intelligence that comes out of the discipline 
of our own self -chosen institutions. 

That is what makes you free, and my confi- 
dent ambition for the United States is that she 
will know in the future how to make each 
Fourth of July as it comes grow more dis- 
tinguished and more glorious than its prede- 



148 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

cesser, by showing that she, at any rate, 
understands the laws of freedom by under- 
standing the laws of service, and that man- 
kind may always confidently look to her as 
a friend, as a co-operator, as one who will 
stand shoulder to shoulder with free men 
everywhere to assert the right. 

That is what I meant at the outset of these 
few remarks by saying that the suggestions 
of this Fourth of July crowd too thick and fast 
to be set in order. This is the most tremendous 
Fourth of July that men ever imagined, for 
we have opened its franchises to all the world. 



XXI 

A JUST PEACE 
(New York, July 8, 1919.) 

President Wilson, on his return from Europe 
in the steamship ''George Washington,^' spoke 
to a great audience in Carnegie Hall as follows : 

Fellow-countrymen: I am not going to 
try this afternoon to make you a real speech. 
I am a bit alarmed to find out how many 
speeches I have in my system undelivered, 
but they are all speeches that come from the 
mind, and I want to say to you this afternoon 
only a few words from the heart. 

You have made me deeply happy by the 
generous welcome you have extended to me, 
but I do not believe that the welcome you ex- 
tend to me is half as great as that which I 
extend to you. Why, Jerseyman though I am, 
this is the first time I ever thought that 
Hoboken was beautiful. I have really, though 
I have tried on the other side of the water to 
conceal it, been the most homesick man in the 
American Expeditionary Force, and it is with 

feelings that it would be vain for me to try to 
11 



I50 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

express that I find myself in this beloved 
country again. 

I do not say that because I lack in admi- 
ration of other countries. There have been 
many things that softened my homesickness. 
One of the chief things that softened it was 
the very generous welcome that they extended 
to me as your representative on the other side 
of the water. And it was still more softened 
by the pride that I had in discovering that 
America had at last convinced the world of 
her true character. 

I was welcome because they had seen with 
their own eyes what America had done for 
the world. They had deemed her selfish. They 
had deemed her devoted to material interests, 
and they had seen her boys come across the 
water with a vision even more beautiful than 
that which they conceived when they had en- 
tertained dreams of liberty and of peace. 

AN ARMY OF CLEAN MEN 

And then I had the added pride of finding 
out by personal observation the kind of men 
we had sent over. I had crossed the seas with 
the kind of men who had taken them over, 
without whom they could not have got to 
Europe; and then when I got there I saw that 
army of men, that army of clean men, that 
army of men devoted to the high interests of 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 151 

humanity, that army that one was glad to 
point out and say, ''These are my fellow- 
countrymen." 

It softens the homesickness a good deal to 
have so much of home along with you, and 
these boys were constantly reminding me of 
home. They did not walk the streets like 
anybody else. I do not mean that they walked 
the streets self -assertively. They did not. 
They walked the streets as if they knew that 
they belonged wherever free men lived, that 
they were welcome to the great republic of 
France and were comrades with the other 
armies that had helped to win the great battle 
and to show the great sacrifice. 

Because it is a wonderful thing for this na- 
tion, hitherto isolated from the large affairs 
of the world, to win not only the universal con- 
fidence of the people of the world, but their 
universal affection. And that, and nothing 
less than that, is what has happened. 

Wherever it was suggested that troops 
should be sent and it was desired that troops 
of occupation should excite no prejudice, no 
uneasiness on the part of those to whom they 
were sent, the men who represented the other 
nations came to me and asked me to send 
American soldiers. They not only implied, 
but they said, that the presence of American 
soldiers would be known not to mean any- 
thing except friendly protection and assist- 



152 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

ance. Do you wonder that it made our hearts 
swell with pride to realize these things? 

But while these things in some degrees 
softened my homesickness, they have made 
me all the more eager to get home where the 
rest of the folks live; to get home where the 
great dynamo of national energy is situated; 
to get home where the great purposes of na- 
tional action were formed; and to be allowed 
to take part in the counsels and in the action 
which were to be taken by this great nation, 
which from first to last has followed the vision 
of the men who set it up and created it. 

A DISTANT HORIZON 

We have had our eyes very close upon our 
tasks at times, but whenever we lifted them 
we were accustomed to lift them to a distant 
horizon. We were aware that all the peoples 
of the earth had turned their faces toward 
us as those who were the friends of freedom 
and of right, and whenever we thought of 
national policy and of its relation upon the 
affairs of the world we knew we were under 
bonds to do the large thing and the right 
thing. It is a privilege, therefore, beyond all 
computation for a man, whether in a great 
capacity or a small, to take part in the counsels 
and in the resolutions of a people like this. 

I am afraid some people, some persons, do 



THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 153 

not understand that vision. They do not see 
it. They have looked too much upon the 
ground. They have thought too much of the 
interests that were near them, and they have 
not Hstened to the voices of their neighbors. 

I have never had a moment's doubt as to 
where the heart and purpose of this people lay. 
When any one on the other side of the water 
has raised the question, "Will America come 
in and help?" I have said: "Of course America 
will come in and help. She cannot do any- 
thing else. She will not disappoint any high 
hope that has been formed of her. Least of 
all will she in this day of new-born liberty all 
over the world fail to extend her hand of sup- 
port and assistance to those who have been 
made free." 

I wonder if at this distance you can have 
got any conception of the tragic intensity of 
the feeling of those peoples of Europe who 
have had yokes thrown off them. Have you 
reckoned up in your mind how many peoples, 
how many nations, were held unwillingly 
under the yoke of the Austro-Hungarian Em- 
pire, tinder the yoke of Turkey, under the yoke 
of Germany? 

These yokes have been thrown off. These 
peoples breathe the air and look around to see 
a new day dawn about them, and whenever 
they think of what is going to fill that day 
with action they think first of us. They 



154 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

think first of the friends who through the long 
years have spoken for them, who were privi- 
leged to declare that they came into the war 
to release them, who said that they would 
not make peace upon any other terms than 
their liberty, and they have known that 
America's presence in the war and in the 
conference was the guarantee of the result. 

A NEW TASK BEGUN 

The Governor has spoken of a great task 
ended. Yes, the formulation of the peace is 
ended, but it creates only a new task just 
begun. I believe that if you will study the 
peace you will see that it is a just peace and 
a peace which, if it can be preserved, will save 
the world from unnecessary bloodshed. And 
now the great task is to preserve it. I have 
come back with my heart full of enthusiasm 
for throwing everything that I can by way of 
influence or action, in with you to see that the 
peace is preserved; that when the long reckon- 
ing comes men may look back upon this gen- 
eration of America and say, ''They were true 
to the vision which they saw at their birth." 



XXII 

A HOME GREETING 
(Washington, July <?, 191Q.) _ 

In reply to an address of welcome from the 
Non-Partizan League of Peace of the District 
of Columbia, the President said: 

Mr. Ralston and Gentlemen: This very 
beautiful reception has taken me entirely by 
surprise. It is a very gratifying surprise, and 
it makes me very grateful to you all. 

The very generous words in which you have 
greeted me are especially gratifying to me. 

I came home confident that the people of 
the United States were for the League of Na- 
tions, but to receive this immediate assur- 
ance of it is particularly pleasing to me. It 
makes my home-coming just that much more 
delightful. 

I have never been quite so eager to get 
home as I was this time, and everything I 
have seen since I sighted land until now has 
made me gladder and gladder that I am home. 
No country can possibly look so good as this 



156 THE TRIUMPH OF IDEALS 

country has looked to me, and I am sure that 
I am expressing the sentiments of Mrs. Wilson 
and of all who are with me in saying that your 
gracious reception has made our home-coming 
all the more pleasurable. 



THE END 



